Revival
by Ba-sing-saying
Summary: Blair is a young survivor growing up in the human colony of Arcadia during the Covenant war, but as the battle rages on, even her home planet doesn't seem so secure. When the monsters come knocking and tensions run high, the line between ally and enemy is awfully thin. Blair-centered, Halo-verse AU. Warnings: profanity, graphic violence, blood/gore, and mild sexual content.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: Hello. If you're not familiar with Halo, no worries. I mostly just borrowed obscure location names and minor details of the Halo-verse. All you'll need to know is that the acronym UNSC stands for United Nations Space Command, and that the Covenant are a coalition of very angry badass aliens. **

**Also, an enormous thank you to the always fantastic raining-down-hearts for being the best beta ever and for being super encouraging in the writing process. You should go read all her stuff immediately.  
**

**Revival Part One**

At one year old, Blair Sauveterre is a survivor, and a cheerful one.

Before she's old enough to know it, she's left behind the home was she born in, as well as a mother and older brother. On paper, the battle of Arcadia in 2531 was a victory for the UNSC, but to the colonists living there, it was a disaster. The Covenant struck Arcadia with a ferocity that left the lush, fertile planet full of ruins and debris, and devoid of a permanent UNSC presence, with all but one small continent completely uninhabitable.

As a pilot shipping people to and from Arcadia, Blair's father had been able to appreciate his home planet. When the first colonists had settled on it, over a century earlier, it was already covered in jungles and open fields flooded with wildlife. It hadn't even needed any terraforming. It was almost a miracle in its own right, a safe haven hidden in the blackness of space. It can't be called any sort of safe anymore, but for the Sauveterres, it's still home- what's left of it, at least.

When Blair is two, her father's arms bear her swaddled into Abaskun. The only remaining human settlement on Arcadia is filled with newcomers just like the two of them, and she laughs and waves obliviously at the evil eye the locals give her and her father when they trudge into town. The government is gone, destroyed by the war when the already thinly spread UNSC left to defend more heavily populated planets, and the distrust is tangible. Too many desperate people wander into town with the notion that they can take what they find, just because the law is gone. They're taught the hard way that the law is _not_ gone, that those who gather here do so to work together, and that they won't tolerate anyone who brings any ill intentions into their town.

There are plenty of kids like her, and even more that are completely orphaned. They're mostly teenagers, since few of the younger children survived long enough in the wild to find refuge in Abaskun. Ragged and grim, they make trouble wherever they go, but no one has the heart to turn them out of town. After all, they're just kids. They remind some parents of the children they've lost. They're desperate people, struggling to put together some semblance of the life that was taken from them.

She's a bundle of giggles and laughs, and when her tired father sits down on the tired, sagging couch of the two-family home that a long and arduous search earns him, she's what brings a smile to his face.

"It's just you and me, Blair. It's just you and me now."

What was stubble on his face has turned into a thorny shrub, and his voice is rough and gravelly, but it soothes the little girl until, to his relief, she falls asleep. She's barely just started saying real words, and he's afraid his taciturn disposition will prevent her from learning to speak properly. He decides that if there's one thing left his baby girl is going to have, it's a good father.

When she wakes up, he tells her stories about her mother and the big brother she used to have, and it takes everything in him to keep from crying in front of her. He never does.

When she's old enough to start asking questions and starts wondering why some kids have two parents and some don't have any, he doesn't have an answer that she would understand. He can't shield her eyes from what's right in front of her, and he realizes eventually that he shouldn't. It still hurts to see her face scrunch up in confusion when all he can tell her is, "That's just how it is, Blair."

And still, without fail, her lips quirk up a moment later. "Okay, daddy," she says, and her smile full of missing teeth melts his heart. He wonders every day if he's getting softer with age, or if every father feels this way, or if maybe he just has the sweetest daughter ever.

_Holy shit. Get a grip, man. If things go on like this, she's gonna play you like a damn keyboard when she's a teenager._ He resolves to be stricter with her.

* * *

It doesn't work. At seven, Blair is unstoppable.

She races down the creaky stairs of the house she calls home with more energy and excitement in her every step.

"Daddy, daddy, daddy! Can I go over to Mifune's? _Pleeeeease_!"

Her father doesn't get through the two syllables of "_alright_" before she sprints through the door with a cry of "_yippee!"_ whose pitch could shatter windows if backed by a more powerful set of lungs. She's finished the writing and math problems that her dad has assigned her, and it's a Saturday, so there's no cooping her up in her room any longer while the sun is out. He'll look at her work later and correct her where she went wrong tomorrow.

Abaskun is safer now, more established. Kids can run through the streets all day without parents getting worried, and adults can scout the forest outside the city limits for miles before feeling uneasy about their surroundings. Most of Arcadia's survivors have already found their way here- those that want to anyway. If only they had some more teachers, they'd have been able to set up a proper school, but at least her dad still remembers enough to teach her the basics. He tells her that kids should be able to read and write, and to work with numbers well enough to get by.

It's only in the moments that she's out of energy, having run herself into the ground, that she slows down enough to notice the unfocused stare in her father's eyes when he sits down at the end of a day. When she frowns and asks him what's wrong, he quickly snaps out of it with a smile that doesn't reach his eyes, and a few reassuring words that she's not mature enough to see through. He confuses her when she slows down to look at him carefully; the whole world confuses her, so she tries not to slow down. It's not really a conscious decision; she just understands that she's happier when she's running towards something than she is when time is passing her by.

She sprints down the block to beat frantically on her favorite neighbor's door with her tiny fists, and when the door opens, a head of short flaxen hair pops out from behind it. "_Mifune!"_ Blair exclaims with arms outstretched.

"Hey Blair," the little boy mumbles, scratching his cheek and looking away shyly.

Blair beams at him for a moment before her cheery expression is replaced with one of impatience. "Well come _on_! Let me _in_!"

He pulls the door open wider and Blair's mischievous grin returns as she trots into his house. He replaces the door gently and follows her up the stairs to his own room.

Later, when the other kids tease him about being friends with the girl down the street, he just turns away and grumbles at them. The next time, when _she's_ there, Blair hollers and points fingers at them in defense of her best friend. She doesn't notice that she's solidifying their accusations against him, and that for being her friend, he doesn't mind the teasing.

* * *

At eleven, Blair is absorbent.

She works with her dad fixing every piece of machinery left in Abaskun, as well as simpler things- pots and pans, shovels, zippers, shoes- anything. New things are hard to come by, and people appreciate her father's assistance. He's not really a mechanic. He was a pilot in what feels like a previous life, but he knows machinery and vehicles better than any of the other survivors. They say that necessity is the mother of ingenuity, so he learns, and since there's no formal school in the tiny city of remnants, she learns with him when she's not occupied with her lessons or scurrying around with the other kids in the neighborhood.

Oddly enough, she's one of the few children that still enjoy the taste of fried plantains. It's the most abundant foodstuff on the planet, aside from wheat and a strange Arcadian version of corn, and it doesn't fare as well as either on the UNSC transports off-planet, so they keep it for themselves. All the other kids complain about it, and her father welcomes the one facet of life in which looking after Blair isn't exhausting: food.

There's not much to add flavor to the bland meals, but once in a while her dad gives her a handful of coins and she pesters the old beekeeper lady until she can weasel a small bottle of honey out of her for the small price she can afford to pay for it. She drizzles it all over the starchy foods and eats them for every meal. Her dad tells her she's going to become a plantain one day if she doesn't eat some more meat or vegetables now and then. Food is the one thing they never run out of on Arcadia, and Blair has no compunctions about any of it.

* * *

At fifteen, she's talented.

She can operate any machine she sets her eyes on, including some that the patrols bring back from the ruins of abandoned towns, and she can do it before anyone else figures out how. Between her and her dad, they're repairing the damaged engines on the freighter that comes to ship the grains off of Arcadia, doubtless for the UNSC troops now, since the colonies that might have needed them before are going up in smoke and plasma fire.

The little colony girl is half woman, growing fast for her age and maturing faster, because life there requires it. Order is a harsh thing in Abaskun, and Mifune Sr. keeps it with guns and blades. When a man is caught forcing himself on a woman, and when another is found over the corpse of his neighbor, Blair doesn't look away as Mifune Sr. cuts their throats in the public square. That's justice in Abaskun: immediate and personal. Few dare to emulate the offenders' actions.

People whisper that Mifune's father used to support the insurrection, back before the Covenant showed up, but now he has no trouble shaking hands with the soldiers that visit every few months for food. Perhaps getting out of a fight with the Covenant with his family intact and his home planet at least partially habitable softened him up a bit. After all, it was the UNSC that had fought the invaders off.

The thoughtful, sandy-haired boy next door isn't little anymore either. He's no longer the shorter of the two, and he's always tripping over himself, his arms and legs longer every morning than he remembers them being the day before. He hasn't learned a specific trade yet, but he helps out in the farms, and when the farms don't need help, he lends his services wherever else he finds need, which mostly means at Blair's. Knowing he'd blush and deny it, she doesn't say a word about it to him, but her best friend has a soft spot for her in more ways than one. She smiles impishly at the thought every time he walks through the doors to the workshop under the guise of _"helping out with work_," and she tries to be there whenever she isn't needed on a job elsewhere.

They're calling her specifically now, separately from her dad, and while he grumbles about it to her, she sees the way he beams with pride when he talks to the other townspeople. She catches him staring at her sometimes with a mixture of fondness and melancholy on his face. When she asks why he's staring, he just laughs it off and tells her it's nothing.

One day, she doesn't accept his answer and demands to know what that look means. "_You look just like your mother_," he says reluctantly. She doesn't have any memory of her mom, but for some reason, the comment brings her to tears. He panics and tries to stop her from sobbing, and when she hugs him, all six and a half feet of his being cries with her.

She can feel what she had been robbed of, the life that was taken from her when her planet was assaulted, but the world still moves fast. She doesn't stop to look back, except to make sure her dad doesn't fall behind. She's wise enough to be grateful for what she _didn't_ lose.

* * *

At sixteen, she kisses her best friend. It's a harmless thing, not much more than a peck on the cheek, but he looks like he's been hit by a truck, and goes red all over.

Her dad is there that time, in the shop, and glares at them suspiciously. Embarrassed, Mifune pretends not to notice, fearing that the older man can read his mind. Blair, on the other hand, smirks like she's just had a very funny thought she's chosen to keep to herself.

A week later, the sun is setting over the red hills on the northwest corner, by the wheat silos. They're walking home from a job, one that Blair had been specifically called for and that Mifune had just _happened_ to find. She chuckles at the thought, and answers "_nothing_" when he asks what's so funny.

The light in the sky starts to fade over the treetops, an orange glow left in its wake, painting the darkening sky with the last brushstrokes of daylight. As she admires the view, a thought strikes her- the same thought she'd had about a week before- and she grabs his hand to hauls him off the beaten road. She knows every building in this part of town, and exactly what little side street to hide in. When they're just about there, he finally resists her tugging and he pulls her to a stop. They reach the corner of the dusty side street and he demands to know where the hell she's taking him in such a hurry.

This time, she leans up a bit and kisses him right on the lips. She stays there, eyes closed, pressing into him and clutching his shirtfront like he'll run from her if she lets go. He's frozen in place, and seconds pass in which he doesn't respond to her actions.

She steps away to find his eyes open wide in surprise. A cold feeling slips into her mind, and she second guesses herself, because she _thought_, she had _really_ thought that he wanted this too, but-

Her fears drop away when he grabs her wrist and quickly pulls her back to himself. This time he's ready, and though neither of them has tried this before, they quickly discover that they don't want to stop.

They don't notice any passersby until a couple of young men only a few years older than them and covered in dirt from whatever job they had been working whistle at them and toss them mischievous toothy grins. One of them tells them to _"get a room,"_ and suddenly they both realize just how late it's become. Heated moments are forgotten at the thought of their parents waiting at home, and they both sprint through the main street, past other townspeople and back towards the south side.

When they're almost at their street, he yells to her to wait, and they slow down, realizing the guilt inherent in getting back to their respective homes this late at the same time, red-faced, sweaty, and panting. They both adjust their paces to a leisurely walk, deciding that getting out of work late and taking the scenic route on their walk home would be a more believable lie if they arrived home shuffling their feet lazily.

Determined to keep their activities unknown, both sixteen year olds endure a small interrogation and lie convincingly, they think, to their respective parents. When she falls into her bed that night, Blair has to stifle a fit of giggles. She replays the afternoon in her mind over and over in her head with a wide smile, and she feels so giddy with happiness that it takes her an hour and a half to doze off.

From then on, the pair makes good use of their free time, and is virtually inseparable.

The next time his mother greets her at his door, her first reaction to seeing Blair's face is a smirk and a wink. Blair is mortified. It quickly becomes obvious to them that there are no secrets in their neighborhood. While this fact is uncomfortable at first, they learn to take a strange kind of pleasure in the snickers and mirthful glances of their friends and neighbors.

* * *

At eighteen, Blair's world comes crashing to a halt.

She's at the shop, trying to fix a thresher for Sondgren, the one up the street with the cornfields. The damn thing is busted up good and well, but she's convinced the problem is mechanical, not electrical. She should know, she's had to work threshers often enough.

Since her dad disagrees with her diagnosis, he leaves for the scrapyard in hopes of finding the right parts to replace the circuit that he believes to be the cause. She tries to un-jam the obstinate little gears behind the tiller and wishes to be back outside again. When it's summertime, she craves the sunlight at any cost, even if it mostly means deliveries and threshing in the fields. Dad's not back yet when a terrifying screech pierces through the walls and the ground shakes under her.

Jumping up from the rusting metal workbench, she swings half her body through the doorway to get a glimpse of what's going on outside. Her jaw flaps open at the glowing starships visible against Arcadia's royal blue sky. Bolts of plasma sweep down on the growing city, and all those years' hard work rebuilding starts crashing down into the streets and squares.

Everyone is scrambling through the streets, running home, trying to find so-and-so _please have you seen him I don't know where he is and I can't find him_ and she can practically smell the fear in the air, but when she gets her first face to face look at the monsters storming in from the east side of town, it doesn't matter anymore, because a sinking feeling in her gut tells her that nobody will survive this. She's heard about them. She knows what happened the first time they were here.

The thought catches her off-guard, because she never saw it with her own eyes, but there are almost no serious space-capable vessels left on the planet, and in lieu of a UNSC rescue or the arrival of a transport freighter, she knows there is no way off Arcadia. She hasn't seen more than twelve UNSC personnel at a time in her life, none less than six months apart, and there's no way in hell any of the four ships in town that are capable of space flight are getting off the ground.

Her calm is replaced by steadily rising panic, because dad left for the 'yard and he never came back. People are lying dead on the street, screeching and crying, and there's plasma in the air, but she _has to find him_. She doesn't make it to the 'yard, because only two blocks down, she finds a man lying face-down in the middle of the street with a burn-hole the size of her head in his back, and he looks awfully familiar.

As she turns him over, disbelief washes over her. Seeing his face is like a dream, because in her memory, her dad is a man that's alive. He runs a repair shop and he looks after all those kids that have nobody else- he's their dad now too, not this stranger sprawled out prone in the dirt. A life that important can't be ended this quickly, it _can't_, but his eyes are lifeless and unblinking. She pulls her hands away from his face with twitching fingers, suddenly not knowing where to move her feet. A high-pitched stream of gibberish causes her to look up.

When she does, a blue, four-foot tall reptilian creature with a breathing mask is pointing either an enormous glowing drill or a plasma gun in her direction, and she _knows_ she's dead- except that in the next second, his brains decorate the wall beside him. She whips her head towards the direction of the gunfire that saved her and sees Mifune's father standing across the street. He holds a large rifle in his hand and he's screaming at her to _run_.

Reality finally floods back in and she moves her legs as fast as her body allows in the opposite direction of the fires and death, and into the dense evergreen forests on the other edge of town. A few others scatter into the trees behind her, but she doesn't notice them. It's only when the tears stream down her face and her legs give way under her at the edge of the shimmering, peaceful lemongrass meadows that her mind goes to Mifune.

She hasn't seen him all day.

She knows she can't go back, and periodically she hears distant jabbering of alien voices that make her knees quake with terror. She stumbles through the grasslands, and forests turn to jungles as she flees the destruction under the falling of the evening sun.

When night falls, the silence that comes with it breeds paranoia in her mind. The only sounds are the occasional chirping of crickets, and every rustling of leaves around her makes her jump. She doesn't sleep a wink, and she doesn't try to until the bite in her thigh muscles and the ache in her ankles prevents her from putting one foot in front of the other.

Finding a little nook between an enormous, mossy tree and a boulder, she curls up and covers herself with whatever foliage she can find. She closes her eyes, but it's hours before she can get even nod off, and her sleep is feverish, filled with dreams that shove her awake.

The sun begins to creep up into the sky, and she can't see it well through the treetops, but she can tell that the sky is changing color. She forces sore legs and feet to trudge over the increasingly rocky ground, and tries to keep tears from her eyes when her mind tries to return to her father and Mifune. She settles on remembering Mifune Sr. in her last moments in town. His eyes were steel, and his voice was a roar. If anyone could survive, he could. He's the enforcer of Abaskun's order and the most combat-capable man in town, and yet she hasn't seen him or anyone else since she fled. The jungle clears and she climbs to the peak of the nearest crooked stone hill to try and get a view of the town over the trees. What she sees stops her cold. A plasma beam is pouring out of an alien starship hovering high over the horizon- melting Abaskun into charred glass.

It hits her that she'll never see them again. They're gone, and it's real and permanent, and there will never, ever be any going back. Her home is a thing of the past, along with everyone in it. She has no way off the planet. They'll glass it all and she'll go down with her home. She almost welcomes the thought, because for the first time in her life, all of her hope is behind her.

The sound of low-flying aircraft is familiar and usually comforting to Blair, but now it sends her into a fit of fear and she scrambles back towards the jungle. She looks up to see if she's been spotted, but what catches her eye shocks her.

It's a small human vessel, the likes of which she's never seen. The exterior looks like it's been through hell. The thing mounted on the bottom can only be some sort of cannon. It's certainly not a transport freighter, and the man hanging out of the open hatch in the back is not wearing a UNSC uniform. In fact, everything about him screams foreign- black vest, some kind of denim shirt, thick goggles tangled with a red bandana around his neck, and unruly bark-brown hair flying every which way.

No matter who he is or where he's from, he's human, and that means that by some miracle, she might have a ride off the planet and out of the path of the approaching inferno. The ship is flying low, but the man doesn't seem to have seen her, so she runs back up to the hilltop and screams at the top of her lungs to get his attention. For a full ten seconds, she thinks the hovering craft hasn't noticed her and will continue on, leaving her on her own when she had just regained some tiny hope, but the man ducks back into the ship and it swerves back around to come to a floating position near the top of the hill.

Over the thrum of the engines and the jumble of rushing relief and twinge of guilt at the idea of survival, Blair doesn't make out what the man yells down to her, but she jumps to catch hold of his outstretched hand and he pulls her up into a little airlock, where she grabs hold of a railing and crumples to the floor.

"Jaks, nice to meet ya!" He hollers, and smacks a button on the wall. "Make yourself comfy, yeah?" The airlock opens to allow her into the bowels of the ship, and the man swings back to sweeping the landscape with what she now notices are some kind of compact, high-grade looking binoculars hanging from his neck. She crawls through the threshold of the airlock onto a bronze-colored metal grating, into a cargo bay inhabited by thirteen other people and cluttered with crates and barrels. Ten of those in the bay are crammed into corners or leaned onto boxes, some sobbing, some huddled together, some seemingly unconscious or asleep. The other three are keeping an eye on the people that Blair realizes can only be other survivors they've rescued.

Her relief and gratitude shrinks when she sees the looks on the faces of the three crewmembers. Two are furrowed with worry, and one looks downright furious. One has a pistol at his hip, though thankfully not the one with the boiling anger on his face. Though their poses are unwelcoming and she's on a ship full of strangers, as Blair drags herself to the side of a rusted barrel near the closest wall and leans her head against it, exhaustion wins out over fear, and her tired eyes shut with the closing of the airlock doors.

* * *

She jolts awake to the sound of unfamiliar voices in her ears and the feeling of the hard metal grate beneath her legs. First, she takes in the harsh, gravelly tone of a man speaking- one that, as she twists her body sluggishly to get a look at him, she realizes she hasn't seen before. Then she recalls the night before. Or day? She's not sure anymore. All she knows is that she's alive and that she has to take a piss pronto. None of these things contribute positively to her mood, and she scowls as she pushes her butt off the ground with her hands and forces her legs to support her.

She's acutely conscious of the fact that the four crew members currently standing at the end of the room have gone silent staring at her, and that one of them- the one with the pistol at his hip- is ogling her head to toe like he wants to make a purchase.

The older man behind him makes himself known. "Good morning!" a gravel-voiced man bellows through a thick graying moustache.

"Thanks."

"I'm Terrence, the captain of this ship. Lucky for all of you we happened to be in the area, huh?"

"Uh… yeah. Thanks." A moment passes, in which Terrence seems to be studying her face and looking for something, but then she realizes he's probably expecting her to introduce herself. "Oh, right. I'm Blair… nice to meet you." She extends a small, but firm handshake and the captain's palm is like leather in her own. _Looks like he doesn't shrug all the work off to the crew then…_

Feeling awkward, Blair asks for the nearest bathroom, and one of the other crewmembers- _Jaks, _she recalls- points through a circular passageway at the back of the cargo bay, towards the front of the ship, and tells her, "Second door on the right. Go and come back, don't wander."

Jaks has an expressionless face that looks older than it must really be. He has no wrinkles, but his features are rough and coarse looking. Still, he seems cordial enough compared to the pretty-boy next to him. Blair realizes that the handsome one with the choppy, almond hair and the slim, angular face covered by stubble is the one that had been giving out the death glare before she fell asleep, and she doesn't make eye contact, though she sees him following her movement out of the corner of her eye. She steps past the other… _passengers? What are we now anyway?_ She walks through the doorway to find her second right.

It's a relatively compact bathroom. A sink folds down from the wall on the right, and a toilet is built into the wall opposite. Directly opposite the entrance is a narrow stall, hidden by a thin sliding door. _A shower_. She takes a minute to wash up when her business is done, and finds suitcases the color of cherries under her reddened eyes in the small, cracked rectangular mirror above the sink. She doesn't spend too long thinking on her appearance, _the last of my worries right now_, and exits the compartment to return to the bay she had come from.

"…slipspace drive is still busted…"

"…what's taking Jerry?...they'll be on us soon…"

"…have to make the jump soon…"

"…nuts?! You want us to vanish into the fourth…"

Their voices turn to whispers as she comes strolling back through the open doorway, and she pauses to look from face to face. They're huddled in a tight circle, and they stop talking altogether, looking over their shoulders at her.

Terrence narrows his eyes and murmurs, "Why don't we take this to the bridge." The four of them hurry off in the direction from which she had come, Jaks casting a furtive glance over his shoulder at her as he walked away.

Blair takes their departure as an opportunity to take inventory of the other human contents of the room: a small-framed blonde girl, probably a few years younger than Blair, shivering in the corner of the room, a woman with her hair back in a bun and a face that has to be a decade beyond her own, a family of four, made up of a mother, a father, and two little boys, a tall, freckled and orange-bearded young man, and two older men- one with white hair and frail body, and the other with a bald head and a belly that spills over his shiny belt buckle.

Feeling like she's somehow obligated to re-occupy her original seat rather than find another, she drifts across the room to the barrel nearest the airlock. After a moment, she perceives that the ship isn't groaning or rumbling beneath her at all, and it strikes her that they must have landed somewhere. Determined not to stay in the dark, she reaches out a tendril of a voice to the traumatized-looking twenty-something year old woman with the bob.

"Hey… uh… do you know if we stopped? I was asleep…"

The woman doesn't notice at first, but when she sees Blair staring expectantly, she turns her attention to her. "Sorry?"

"I- do you know if we've landed?" Blair decides the woman's mind is probably elsewhere, and that she shouldn't try initiating too much conversation. She's here physically, but the distant look in her eyes says that mentally…

Blair is surprised at the observation, as it contrasts with what she sees in herself. She can't think about her friends and her home and her father or she knows she'll break down into a sobbing mess, and she's not ready to do that. She doesn't feel _safe_ doing that, not with these strangers. I_ should be miserable, and all I can think of is me… is this why I survived? Because I only looked after myself?_ The image of her dad's proud, cheery expression, a rare look he had only ever given her, contrasted itself from the hollow, lifeless corpse she had torn herself away from the day before. _No. No. You couldn't have done anything differently. _If surviving means feeling guilty, then so be it, but she is _not_ going to die here. _Focus on the now. Where we are now and where we're going. It's all for nothing, if I die, right?_

"Oh. Yeah, I- I think so." The woman looks back to the floor, and she doesn't speak for another minute. She can't just sit around waiting though. She should at least make an ally- _a friend_, she corrects herself.

"I'm Blair." She musters the courage to quirk her lips up at Amanda. "Nice to meet you, though I wish it weren't here." She gives Blair a gentle nod in response.

"I'm Amanda." She doesn't smile, doesn't extend a hand for shaking, but Blair knows that under these circumstances, a few words are enough.

* * *

A few hours pass before a crewmember returns, and this time it's the one Blair hasn't paid much attention to. He looks average in every way- dark brown jacket, boots, brown eyes, short brown hair, and no immediately distinguishing features. He gives the room a cursory scan, before directing his next words towards Blair. The others are all still keeping to themselves or passed out from exhaustion, though Amanda and the round older fellow are paying attention. "I'm gonna show you to your cabins. We've got a few empty so you'll at least get to sleep in bunks. Follow me."

The short trek through the ship leads them through the doorway, down a small set of stairs, and down a ladder to four rooms. One looks to be occupied already, though whomever it belongs to isn't there. Blair peeks inside and gets a look at what appear to be spare machine parts strewn across the floor and stacked up against the close travel case next to the cot. _The mechanic maybe?_

As he climbs back up the ladder, the crewmember introduces himself as Mark, almost as an afterthought. The family immediately takes up residence in one room and shuts the door for privacy- they must still be coming to grips with the wondrous reality of their collective survival thus far. The rest of them divide evenly, with the three men in the room next to the mechanic's, and the women in the room next to them family. Each room only has one cot and one bench on the opposite wall, so one of them will have to sleep on the floor. Not wanting the floor, but neither wanting to selfishly claim the bed as her own, Blair sits herself down on the bench, which proves to be about the right length for her entire body when she lays out flat on her back.

The bits of worried conversation she had heard from the crew returns to her, and she wonders if it really matters how comfortable she gets, considering they're still on a planet in the process of being glassed. They'll be dead soon if they stay here. _Slipspace. We need to get to slipspace, otherwise they'll shoot us down even if we're in the air. _Blair has never been to another planet, and she's never seen a craft with a Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engine up close, but her dad had explained the concept to her years ago. He'd told her how he used to fly grand transport vessels from earth and Reach to Arcadia, back before she was born, back when Arcadia was still a pretty tourist spot in addition to a fertile farming colony.

A slipspace drive opens a hole in the fabric of space-time, allowing a ship to hurtle through seven dimensions to resurface light-years away instantaneously. _If only the damn things weren't so temperamental_, her dad had told her, _space travel would've been easy. As it was before, you could make the jump and spend two hours or two weeks in slip to come out to the same place. You could only guess if you'd need the cryo-pods, and the freezer-burn they'd give you stung like hell. And usually the place you came out wasn't all that near where you were aiming. It was like catapulting a rock over an ocean and trying to hit an acorn on the other side. _

He'd heave a sigh and shake his head as he finished, _they're a little better now, but you couldn't ask me to repair a slipspace drive for all the money in the Milky Way. I don't need the money and I'm not ready to disappear into the seventh dimension if I twist a screw the wrong way._

The younger girl finally introduced herself both to Amanda and to Blair, and Lacey. Once she started talking, she didn't stop, and the two slightly older girls had to calm her down from her anxiety that was spilling over into words. Their reassuring words are soon disrupted by a ringing crash against the side of the ship, and the groaning tilt of the floor under them. Blair leaps to her feet as swiftly as she can and trips over the small step that she hadn't noticed at the bottom of the open doorway to their room. Grabbing the rungs of the ladder in the hallway, she swears and rights herself, only to be shaken backwards onto Amanda when the vessel jolts unnaturally again, and stutters upwards with the thrum of the engines.

When she clambers through the hatch and into the main corridor, Blair catches the heated voices of the crew sounding from the room opposite the direction of the cargo bay. _That must be the bridge_. Terrence practically tumbles out of the bridge after a man she hasn't seen, and they both go barreling down a hatch on the other side of the corridor.

"We're too close to the fucking-" The man- _gotta be the mechanic_\- wails as he descends.

"It doesn't matter, they'll rip us apart!"

"-planet, the gravity well will-"

"There's no more time to fix-"

Jerry bellows wordlessly in frustration and the walls almost become the floor with the impact that rolls the ship almost ninety-degrees. Terrence roar up towards the bridge. "_Make. The fucking. Jump."_ sears her eardrums, and suddenly the space in front of her punches Blair in the gut and pulls her stomach down to her feet, and everything is still.

* * *

After an hour of waiting restlessly in her room, Blair's impatience to know what the hell is going on is put to rest by the ship-wide PA system.

"Alright folks," Terrence sighed through speakers, "here's the situation. We've just jumped to slipspace. The, ahhh… turbulence… that you experienced, was a group of Covenant banshees- little attack boats, you know, trying to blast a hole in the side of my ship. Anyway, we're a little banged up, but we're out of harm's way for now, and they don't seem to have followed us."

He sighed again, tiredly, and continued. "Unfortunately, our slipspace drive is damaged. Arcadia was just a pit stop, see, so we could repair it before it _really_ malfunctioned, but the Covenant showed up before we could finish that job, so I guess it's lucky for you lot it was busted in the first place, otherwise we wouldn't have been there long enough to pick you all up... problem is, with the punishment it's taken on top of the original damage, we're not quite sure where we're going to pop out of slip, and the timeframe is a bit..." There's muffled speech in the background, and the captain pauses to address it before returning to the speaker.

"But I'm rambling…" An authoritative confidence returns to his voice, and he continues. "I just need you all to sit tight for now. We don't have cryo-pods, so we're going to be awake for the whole ride, which should be about two days, give or take. We'll be calling you up to eat when we have our meals. And if you need a toilet, you've got our equivalent of a bathroom down there, opposite the ladder." He chuckles, "Easy to miss, seeing as it looks more like a closet. Let me know if you need anything else. Welcome to the _Nightfall._ We hope you enjoy your stay."

The audio cuts out. _Damaged slipspace drive… shit._ In spite of that concern, Blair decides that for now, there's not much for her to do, other than get to know her hopefully very temporary roommates a little better, and maybe get acquainted with the passengers across the hall. She was always one to make friends fast, and not one to distrust or sit around on her own and introspect. She especially can't afford to do that now. She's keeping a tight lid on what she's aware she hasn't accepted as reality yet, and when she's honest with herself, she knows she doesn't want to. Any distraction will do to keep this feeling like a dream she'll wake up from sooner or later, rather than a nightmare that's devoured her life and planted itself in its place.

She chats with Lacey about her life, her memories, and she comforts her with a hug and a pat on the back when she her emotions get the best of her. Consoling the girl kicks her mind out of its own house and keeps it outside, where it can't look at the pain inside. She changes the topic when she fears the girl has settled down enough to ask about her own past, for fear that she might lie, or worse, answer truthfully.

Then she moves on to Amanda, exchanging fewer but more meaningful words about less sentimental things- favorite foods, work, the crew, and so on, until their mouths run dry and their fuel for conversation runs low.

She learns the names of the little boys, Ian and Charlie, across the hall, and introduces herself to their parents, Ruth and Vin Caposi. He was a contractor of sorts, helping design and build new buildings in Abaskun while his wife looked after the kids. They lived on the north side of town, and they agree that while Abaskun is too small to be called a city, it was big enough to get lost in if you didn't know your way. She's surprised to realize just how many people actually lived there- according to Vin, almost fifteen thousand people. Considering the way most of the population was spread out thinly outside of the main hub, with all the farms and fields, it wasn't such a wonder that she'd never met them before. She cuts the conversation short before they can get too personal, and opts not to talk to the men quite yet.

Sleep doesn't come quickly, but when it does, it's dreamless.

* * *

On the first day, meals are subdued and companionable. Everyone is just becoming familiar with each other, and worries about the fate of the journey are on hold while the ship plunges through slipspace- a neutral ground if there ever was one. She finally discovers the name of the pretty-boy with the perpetual scowl. _Blaise Lemaign_, he tells her with his expression sour as a lemon. He's the pilot and the resident expert on navigating slipspace. His features and his faux hawk haircut strike a contrast with his downer disposition.

She also learns the names of the other men. James is the white haired man, born on earth and made a life on Arcadia at the age of eighteen. The chubby fellow who owns the indecipherably fast stream English with a Spanish tilt is Pedro, a businessman who had survived the first battle on Arcadia and lived out in the wilds with a small group, including Ryan, the redhead with the gentle voice.

The family keeps mostly to itself, preoccupied with keeping the alternately scared and obnoxious children from whining about the unappetizing food and scampering around the utility room where everyone ate. _A common room with a larder and a stove,_ she calls it.

* * *

On the second day, the crew is on edge- worried, it would seem, about the still defective slipspace drive and the beating the hull had taken. Blair finds her hearing more than adequate as she eavesdrops on their conversation. Blaise explains that the smaller the ship, the more stress that slipspace travel puts on it. With the hull integrity already compromised, a small vessel, _a smuggling boat like this one_, is in danger of crumbling to parts.

_So that's what you do with a ship like this. The UNSC owns the skies. There are bigger ships for transporting goods, and nicer ones for people. You'd have to be either broke or hiding from the law to buy passage on a ship like this. And what the hell would you pay with?_ She decides she doesn't want to know anything more about the crew's business. While she doesn't gain any reassurance about their fate, she notes that at least the passengers are all friendly enough now, so at least one good thing came of their communal eating.

* * *

Two days become four and the crew grows warmer with familiarity, but no less anxious about their current predicament. They expect to be dropping out of slip soon, considering their estimation, but don't dare drop out early and risk materializing in front of an asteroid or in the middle of dead space, light years from a solid land mass and farther from civilization.

* * *

Four days become eight, and the crew grows colder as their nervousness grows, as if the fear is feeding on the very breath in their lungs, forcing them to remain silent and distant. Even Terrence, who normally tells tall tales and guffaws at his own jokes when the mood of the room grows sour, is increasingly tense. Twice, Blair finds Mark and Jaks having an intense debate in hushed, whistling whispers, and both times, they stop and stare blankly until she's out of earshot.

* * *

When day eleven rolls around, she enters the utility room to the sound of shouting. The first to show up for the breakfast that they don't announce anymore, she isn't noticed right away.

"-had enough for the five of us, but we didn't stock up for _fifteen!_"

"Look, it'll just have to be enough. If we ration it out-"

"Cap, we don't even know when we'll drop out. If we're not extremely fucking accurate, which I doubt we will be, considering this one _still_ hasn't fixed the damn-"

Terrence finally spots her over Jaks's shoulder. "Enough! We'll make it last!"

"But cap, list-"

Instead of getting louder, the captain's voice went quiet and sharp. "_I said enough. Or would you like to be the first to go without?_"

Blair looks on in borderline horror as the crew manning their vessel stop cold, eyeing each other with malice. Mark turns around and walks right past her without a sound. Jaks remains impassive, and Terrence is solemn throughout the meal.

The ship falls into real-space around noon, but instead of relief, she observes unrestrained fear in the faces of the crew, and Blaise glowers even harder at everyone than before. She doesn't have to overhear Blaise and Terrence to know what's wrong.

"_We're way off target._ _It'll take at least four weeks to reach Roost from here if we push the engines to the max. The fuel will last, but Jerry doesn't know if the engines will, and the food definitely won't. And considering the margin of error on this jump, in terms of both space and time, making another one would be suicide… our only hope is being picked up by a passing ship, and it's all dead space on our sensors…"_

She gets the shivers lying on her bench, and doesn't notice Amanda and Lacey trying to get her attention, asking what's wrong until they physically shake her, concern on their faces. _You have no clue. Neither of you have a clue. After all this, we're going to die_. She bursts into tears, bawling hysterically and sending Lacey into a fit. Lacey brings Ruth in, thinking she can figure out a solution they couldn't, but she's wrong. Blair won't answer them, won't say a word, because they won't understand.

It's not about dying. She could tell them what she had heard, enlighten them, let them know that they'll all be decaying in the belly of a broken down smuggling ship soon, but to what end? It doesn't even matter. What matters is that it will all really be over- not just her, but her life on Arcadia, her home, her family, her friends...

There really is no going back now, because the floodgates are finally open and the only thing she knows are her daddy's callused hands, the dark hair on his arms, the sandpaper stubble on his face, his eternally calm voice, the afternoons and mornings spent together, his lessons and wise advice, and the soft heart full of unflinching love that stern words couldn't cover. She sees Mifune's short tow-colored hair and the blush on his cheeks when he was just a boy next door, remembers smell of his neck and the taste of his lips when he was more, and feels the warmth of his body against hers when he was even more. She's hurt by the joy leaping in her chest at the words they exchanged and those they didn't have to, and the days spent toiling and getting dirty and bruised and sore and utterly content with all that they had come flooding back through her mind. She can picture his mother's knowing smirks and hear Mifune senior's stern and reliable instruction on anything and everything. It all returns: Alice's pitch black locks that she always envied, Perry's side-splittingly funny pranks, Fred's pouting when he didn't have the money for the sizzling grilled meat at the street vendors, Cass's friendly embrace, all the little boys and girls giggling in the streets, the smell of the corn fields, the rush of the wind at the top of the watchtower, the evergreen woods, and the chatter of Abaskun's market at noon. All the laughter, the yelling, the joy, and the pain fills her heart until she's sure she'll burst, and finally, when it all clears, she's face to face with the brother she'd never known and the mother whose only face was her own.

She sleeps in Abaskun that night, surrounded by the life behind her.

* * *

Blair wakes to the sound of screeching and gunshots.

"_I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. It's the only way." _Bang_._ Bang, bang, bang. It's fucking Mark and he's fucking shooting into the family's cabin, and Pedro is cursing and the children are screaming and suddenly everyone's silent.

"Well that's that." _Jaks. Fucking Jaks. Fuck you, fuck you to hell there is no way I'm dying here_.

"Now the girls. But fuck, I can't kill a woman. That's wrong."

"You just did kill a woman."

"She was a mom. Doesn't count." _Holy shit. They're coming._ Mark slides open the thin, paneled door with the barrel of a scratched-up, gritty looking pistol, and Amanda jerks up off the floor with her eyes open in shock. Lacey is somehow still blinking away sleep and taking her time to rise from her cot. In his steady, nearly monotone voice, he speaks to them. "Look. I'm real sorry about this, ladies, but we can't all make it off this ship, so it's either us or you."

Jaks pulls Mark's hand down before he can aim his gun. "Wait. I think we can let them live. There'll be enough for to go around without the others."

Mark looks unsure. "Why? They'll still-"

"It won't come for free though." Jaks shoots Mark a loaded look out of the corner of his eye. "They'll just have to work for their share."

Lacey finally has the sense to screech in fear and blabber out to her roommates that he's got a gun, but Amanda shuts her up and keeps her eyes trained on Jaks. _He can't mean…_ Blair tests her theory.

"I'm a mechanic. I'm sure if I help Jerry, we can-"

Jaks interrupts. "Come on now, Blair. Don't play coy. Jerry can take care of the ship on his own. I'm interested in another set of skills." Mark's bland face becomes increasingly more despicable as it twists into a smile. "I think this is fair. Don't you think so?" Mark nods eagerly. "We're not forcing you or anything, but we don't take freeloaders on this ship anymore."

Lacey finds her voice again. "The captain wouldn't do this! He'll-"

"He'll nothing, girl. He's not in charge anymore." Jaks turns to Blair and Amanda again. "You think about it when your stomachs get grumbly, yeah?" Turning to Lacey, he adds, "You too little missy." With a toothy grin, he retreats up the ladder with Mark right behind him, both stuffing their weapons somewhere in their jackets.

None of the girls move or say a word- Lacey in unadultered fear and Amanda in silent rage. Blair wonders for a moment whether the fact that her life in Abaskun had been mostly devoid of anything of this loathsome nature is because things this fucked up are an anomaly, an exception to the rule of human life, or if her sheltered, isolated community had been a single bastion of bliss in a world filled with corruption. She can't know for sure. All of her hope drains out of her. If this is all that's out there, she hopes the Covenant finishes their work, because all that is worth saving has already been destroyed.

* * *

To Blair, it feels like days pass by as they sit around, but she knows it's only a few hours. Amanda makes her way out into the corridor to shut the doors to the other rooms, which Jaks and Mark had left wide open. After the second door slams shut, she sees Amanda rush past their doorway to the bathroom, and hears the grating sound of vomiting. Blair wishes they'd have taken the damn bodies away, but can't think of any way seven corpses could be carried up a ladder.

She sets her mind to a less nauseating task, and calculates the risk of trying to steal food unseen. _They'd probably rape me or kill me, but if they don't see me, we get to eat._ She changes tack to thinking of ways to kill Jaks and Mark, as well as Blaise and Jerry, if they're cooperating with Jaks and Mark. _No ifs. Assume they're together._

All three women are unarmed, and the crew has at least two handguns. Without the element of surprise, it would be an impossible task. Both men are probably as strong as Blair or Amanda, and definitely more muscular than Lacey. Either way, Jaks would also have a weight advantage. _It doesn't matter. They have guns._ _Unless…_

The idea hits her and she wants to pretend she didn't think it. It's too risky and there's no way she can pull it off, but it's going to have to work. The longer they wait, the hungrier they'll become, and the weaker they'll get, and they have no reason to believe that any of the crew won't just storm down and take them by force anyway.

Amanda stomps back in, looking more furious than sick, and sits on the edge of the bed with her head in her hands. While she broods and Lacey cowers in the corner of her cot, Blair's idea grows into a plan, and the plan sprouts details until it's covered in thorns.

She whispers it to Amanda, and for the first time in days, Amanda smiles. It's a mean thing, filled with hatred, and Blair sees the potential behind it. When she tells Lacey, Lacey goes solemn, and nods in agreement.

* * *

Lacey takes up a lookout position under the ladder.

Amanda removes her long-sleeved shirt and places it against the small mirror in the closet-sized bathroom. Blair removes her thick leathery jacket, squeezes in behind Amanda, and closes the door. She applies her jacket over Amanda's shirt, and Amanda holds it in place. Blair braces her back against the wall behind her, raises her right knee to her chest, and kicks straight into the center of the mirror. The sound of glass breaking isn't quiet, but it's muffled by the layers of clothing over it, and by the door sealing the room shut.

As Amanda peels away the jacket and shirt, shards of glass fall out onto the clothing. Only a few pieces clatter to the ground with a sound that sounds ear-splitting to the tense, fearful ears in the room, but after a moment of absolute silence, the women resume their work. Blair selects a long, sharp sliver of glass and tucks it into her waist right behind her hip, under her shirt. She'd likely need the front open for at least a few moments before she'd have a chance to use her weapon. Amanda selects a piece for herself and hides it away.

Lacey gives Blair a small "good luck," as she pulls herself shakily up the ladder. Not knowing which direction to shout, Blair just yells at the top of her lungs. "Hey fellas! I'm ready to work!"

Blaise approaches from the utility room and freezes when he sees her, his eyes red and his expression one of misery. Shooting a gaze up the corridor at Jaks, who appears at the other end, Blaise dashes into a side room. Jaks turns to her with a grim smile.

"Got hungry so soon? I really thought you'd've held out longer, but I can't blame you. We're running you a hard deal." As she climbs out into the hallway, Amanda follows her, and voices her willingness to earn her keep as well. Jaks only chuckles and says that Mark will have to wait his turn. "Can't have us both cooped up at the same time now can we?"

Blair gulps. The plan was to take care of both of them at once, and then deal with Blaise and Jerry with the pistols they would loot. _We could take him right now. The two of us together…_

She tosses Amanda a look, and Amanda's face is unreadable. The moment passes. _No, it's all down to me._ _Either that or I get… we try again… no. I'll get it right the first time._

* * *

She follows Jaks to his cabin. He sits down on his cot, undoes his belt, but keeps his jacket on- _with the pistol inside. Fuck._ There's no other way.

"Come on then, kitten. Show me what you got."

With those words, an icy rage she doesn't think herself capable of bubbles up in her chest and seems to overtake her entirely. _Kitten? Okay, honey. I'll show you what kitten's got._ She peels her shirt off slowly and lets him get a good look at her semi-naked torso. His eyes focus on her chest greedily. _You'd do this to me and to them?_ _Hold us at gunpoint and call it fair?_

She unbuttons the fly on her scraped, torn, and otherwise abused shorts. The things had taken a beating over the last few days, and she's glad that on the morning Arcadia was glassed, she had chosen to wear them instead of the baggier cargo shorts she normally wore in the shop. The fragment of glass is cutting into her skin, but with these pants it doesn't fall out. Without taking them off, she flashes a wide smile and jumps onto his lap.

His eyebrows arch in pleased surprise. "Damn. Looks like I made the right choice being generous with you, huh?" She wraps her legs around his waist, gaining a better grip to keep her in place. His shoulders slump as he reaches his arms around her to grope her, and a look of confusion crosses his face when he feels the object sticking out of the back of her shorts. Blair sees her opportunity, and she takes it.

The adrenaline in her veins is all fury as she jams her thumbs forcefully towards the backs of Jaks's eye sockets. It's a full second before what's happening registers and he howls in pain. He tries to push her off, but she's too well attached to budge. He reaches for his gun, but he's disoriented, and his other arm shoves at her blindly. He tries to stand, only to bring them both tumbling to the floor. She's almost pinned beneath him, but she wriggles out to roll him over and drive a knee into his chest.

Before he can liberate his firearm, Blair whips the glass out and drives it into the side of his neck, along with every ounce of revulsion she holds for him and everything he stands for, and in her mind she sees Mifune's father ruthlessly cutting down the few who had _dared_ take a life or violate another in their town. Blood pours over her torso and his half-living eyes plead with her, but she drops his body down to the floor.

She steps away, a wave of nausea and dizziness sweeps over her. She takes a moment to balance herself on her own two feet, and snatches his pistol from the hand that had spent its final energy trying to grasp it. It occurs to her that she's never actually fired one before, but she exiles the thought immediately. She'd seen one used before, and she'd use it now.

She scampers up the ladder to the main corridor, only to see Mark round a corner with gun in hand. The instant he sees her, there is shock and disgust written on his face, and the barrel of his gun is aimed at her before she can raise her arm.

A crack resounds and a bullet flies by Blair's head before he has a chance to pity herself for her own demise, and Mark falls on his face. Jerry swings the metal wrench down on his head like an axe twice more before he drops it and collapses to his knees, trembling. Blaise darts out from the same room, takes in the scene, and approves. He stoops down to place a hand on Jerry's shoulder and speaks in the softest voice she's heard from him. "It's okay. You're okay." He continues like that, holding Jerry like a wounded animal, and Jerry covers his face with his hands.

Blair lets the pistol fall to the deck, and falls to her knees as well, heart pumping and incredulity mounting at the red coating the front of her body.

She doesn't think she's going to be okay for a long time.

* * *

In the seven days following, the survivors of the _Nightfall_ give up all hope of rescue. Blaise explains that they'd had an argument with the captain the night before Jaks and Mark went violent, that they'd wanted to kill the passengers to preserve the food. _"It's us or them,_" they'd said. The captain became furious and refused to be swayed, saying that all hope was not lost, that they'd make it somehow, and that had been that. Blaise and Jerry explain that their survival had hinged on their usefulness, and that they had been threatened at gunpoint to cooperate. Jaks and Mark had needed Blaise for a pilot, and Jerry to repair and maintain the terminally ill vessel until they could make it to Roost. Neither of them had a weapon of his own. They ration out small morsels of food once a day, but it's a hollow act, devoid of conviction.

When the _Abundance_ makes radio contact on day seven, they're all dumbfounded. The prospect of actually making it out alive hits them, and they scramble onto the communication panel to respond to the flurry of questions that the crew of the _Abundance_ asks.

As it turns out, the captain had been right. They would all have been saved if they'd only waited. It makes Blair want to kill Jaks and Mark all over again, but the two men responsible for the ruin on the _Nightfall_ are already dead. _Terrence, Vin, Ruth, Ian, Charlie, Pedro, Ryan, and James. All for nothing._

The crew of the _Abundance_ is horrified at what they find, and Blaise's explanation does little to lessen their horror. They tow the _Nightfall_ and give its passengers a lift to Roost, though they keep a distrustful eye out the entire journey there. "_Malfunction of our slipspace drive_," they tell her. "_Lucky for you, huh? You'd have been stuck out here!"_

Blair smiles grimly at the irony. _Yeah. Lucky._


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Relatively short update this time. My life is about to get very busy and so is Blair's, so the next update may be a while away, but there will be plenty to look forward to. Enjoy! Also, reviews are helpful and greatly appreciated.  
**

**Revival Part Two**

Blair puts one foot in front of the other and drifts slowly down the corridor. Her eyes wander over the drab, unadorned walls and floors of the _Abundance_\- all practically identical- to the faces of the four crew members standing around and cracking jokes.

They're always telling jokes. They're always laughing and barking orders and griping about the irony of eating bland, tasteless rations while their ship lugs tons of perfectly good produce through space. Men and women of all shapes and sizes in tan uniforms jog down hallways, with crates and wrenches and clipboards in their arms and quick words on their lips. The ship is bustling, permeated by the lively banter of its crew and filled to the brim with foodstuffs.

In the eye of this hurricane of vibrancy, Blair feels like an apparition, gliding silently through passages and cargo bays without purpose or substance. After two weeks of pushing their tub of a ship sluggishly towards Roost, the crew of the _Abundance_ is familiar with the three young women that survived the ill-fated _Nightfall_, as well as with the two remaining crew members of the smuggling vessel. Their voices still evaporate like a puddle in the desert when her feet carry her past. Their smiles melt into frowns and expressions of pity when they look at her. To the best of their abilities, they accommodate the obvious needs of the strangers they rescued, but there is no common ground between them and the exiled travelers they grant passage on their boat.

The only thing that gives Blair a sense of direction, that makes her feel like herself again, is Lacey. The teenager keeps crying and waking up fitfully every night, and it prevents her from staying asleep, but secretly Blair is grateful. When she speaks to the girl in hushed tones and smothers her sobs by hugging her close, it feels for those moments as if she's somehow separated herself from the chasm that looms beneath her.

Blair tells herself that she's still a teenager too, but the thought doesn't carry weight anymore. She knows that a threshold has been crossed, and that there is simply no going back- to her home, to her friends, or to any form of dependence on others. Still, the least she can do is comfort the poor kid that was pushed over that line before she was ready.

_As if anyone could ever be ready._ She's aware that the gentle smile she puts on doesn't fool Amanda or Blaise or Jerry, and she's not even sure that it fools Lacey, but it's something to hide behind, if only for a little while, to keep away the uncertainty of what is to come. It occurs to her that the only person she can really fool is herself. _Not true_. _Fooled Jaks well and good._ The smirk that the thought brings to her face surprises her, but she finds that she's okay with that. _Bastard deserved it._

It's only when she's asleep that she can't shut out the memories. When she's not woken by Lacey's nightmares, she wakes from her own with a start- familiar old sights from home dancing in front of her eyes- and has to heave a sigh and try yet again to find sleep.

When the crew announces that Roost is only a few days away, Amanda finally brings up the unwelcome topic of what to do once they land. It has crossed Blair's mind that she was recently and suddenly rendered alone in the universe, with the exception of her four acquaintances, and that though bound by what had occurred aboard the _Nightfall_, they have little else in common, and no idea where to go from here. The thought of moving on from this seems absurd, as if the whole ordeal should be over and that all of them should be allowed to return home any day now, as if the whole thing was just some sick divine test that they managed to pass.

It's a small relief to hear that Blaise and Jerry still have all the money that had been stashed away on the _Nightfall_, and that they intend to share it, rather than duck out once they hit land and leave the three girls stranded on a foreign planet without the means to pay for food or shelter. The ship itself should bring a small boatload of money as well, since the two former crewmates can't bear to keep it for themselves.

"It's the least we could do," Blaise tells them, but Blair knows now that it's not. Loneliness weighs on her shoulders, but she takes comfort in the fact in spite of the despondency she feels, she isn't truly alone.

* * *

Jerry leads the five to the bar of the Tehran Inn &amp; Tavern, and an explosion of sounds and aromas wash over Blair. The long, low-ceilinged room smells like spices whose names she can't recall, mixed with beer and a scent that she can only identify with a forest after a rainstorm. Customers wearing everything from two-tone shipyard work uniforms to tacky, pastel-colored suits and dresses sit at worn wooden tables and eat kebabs and couscous. Hearty laughter erupts from the bar on the far side of the room, and waitresses in dark green aprons bustle from table to table, their hair up in ponytails and their tongues rattling off orders at a mile per minute. As the group approaches the bar, Blair's daze from the sensory overload is abruptly interrupted by the piercing sound of shouted profanities.

"Jeremy Anders, you _worthless little shit-nugget!_ How _dare_ you show your face in my inn?" The powerful, shrill voice is completely at odds with its owner's slight frame and tight bun of gray-white hair, and some of the gruffer bar patrons turn to watch the scene with the grins of people in the know.

Jerry flinches and scratches the back of his head with an awkward smile. "Hey auntie, good to see you ag-"

"_Don't_ you 'Hey auntie' me, you shameless asshole! It's been _two years!_" The old woman doesn't look like much, but the palm she places in front of Jerry's face to cut short his response carries an air of authority, and half of Blair expects her to pull Jerry out of the room by his ear like a little boy that has misbehaved.

Further expanding on the granny persona, she returns Blaise's polite, hesitant greeting with "Hello there, Blaise. It's very nice to see you again. You should stop by more often, and drag my rascal of a nephew with you. It's been too long since I've seen you boys."

Blair can't help but be amused by the familial interaction, and the five follow Auntie out past the bar and tables to a cozy office with earth-colored walls and filled with a clutter of trinkets, vases, and what are presumably pictures of family. She has to cover her mouth to stifle a giggle when she spots a photo of a black-haired, bronze-skinned little boy, clearly a young Jerry with chubby cheeks and missing teeth. Lacey and Amanda follow her gaze to the same photo, and it elicits a similar response from them. Jerry looks mortified, as if the cuteness in the picture has just shattered the hyper-masculine image he never actually had.

"Now, Blaise," Auntie begins, as she seats herself in the reclining brown leather chair behind her desk. Her upright posture and firm voice immediately command the attention of everyone in the room with an ease that Blair admires and envies. Auntie slowly stuffs some kind of pungent green snuff into a long wooden pipe and lights it with the quick strike of a match. "Why don't you tell me to what I owe the honor of seeing my dear nephew again, and what these three nice girls are doing following you two scamps around, _hmm_?"

* * *

Four months of living and working at the _Tehran Inn &amp; Tavern_ reveals that the old dog is all bark and no bite. Auntie Yasmin, or _the Madame_, as the patrons affectionately call her, treats her "three new nieces"as if they truly are her own, teaching them how to be quick on their toes. They find their time on the job passing by so fast that it actually becomes pleasant.

Blair knows that her work shouldn't be enough to both cover the rent and earn her the extra gray paper bills she receives, and yet she and her two new co-workers are compensated generously every Sunday night. In fact, the little family that Auntie Yasmin brings together for dinner once a week makes her almost feel at home in the Persian-themed hotel and restaurant. The room she rents out to the three of them lacks nothing, and Blair finds that between work and living upstairs, she barely gets enough time alone to dwell too much on the past or worry about the future. Auntie had cryptically remarked when they first made arrangements that she "_takes care of her own_." Blair can't be sure, but she begins to think that even this, the constant demands of her work and her co-workers that keep her in the present, is a small gift from the Madame.

The heavily seasoned, vaguely Middle Eastern Earth cuisine doesn't appeal to her much at first, being completely at odds with the simpler food that she's used to, but seeing the atmosphere gradually change week by week from gloom and quiet withdrawal to laughter and cheerful, albeit subdued, camaraderie makes her genuinely feel as if she belongs. In spite of all that was lost, she's gained a small family in Auntie Yasmin, Lacey, Amanda, Jerry, and Blaise.

It's the work that finally gets to her.

Lacey is too easily flustered, and isn't quite up to scratch as a waitress, and Amanda proves herself far too valuable in the kitchen to be squandered on attending the needs of customers, but Blair fits into the role as if it's a talent she never knew she had. She finds herself almost instantly accepting enormous tips, especially from the rowdy young men, and occasionally women, that frequent the establishment.

"Shipyard workers and ships' crew," Auntie tells her with a funny quirk to her lips. "Quite a few of them have taken a liking to you. You keep flashing those teeth and you'll be making plenty extra, honey." She winks and tells Blair to get back to work, so she does. She works and works and works.

The cheeky I-know-something-you-don't grin she gives the customers fits like a glove, and she finds that a little swing in her hips as she walks away from a table guarantees that all eyes remain on her until she's left the room. She leans over the table nice and slowly when collecting the dishes and silverware and she has a pocketful of tips by the end of her shift, especially in the evenings. _It shouldn't be this easy_, she tells herself, because it's so not her, because she's never been one to put on such a show, never smiled for someone else's benefit or for a wad of cash. _Never needed to. Except for once…_

The money is good and her life is comfortable, even pleasant, but in spite of the guilt that pricks her, she admits to herself that Roost feels like a bad habit. If she could only work with her hands again, she would be herself. She would be the person she was before. She asks Blaise and Jerry about the jobs they've found in the shipyards, but they don't volunteer the information she wants, and she's too cautious to ask more specifically and arouse suspicion. Besides that, she has no idea whether her skills as a mechanic or handywoman, or whatever her old job back home would translate to here on Roost, would be enough to land her a steady income. The only way to find out would be to take a stroll down by the docks and find out for herself, but she puts it off another day, and another week, and another, until finally Blaise and Jerry catch the girls as the restaurant is closing and ask them if they have a few minutes to talk.

* * *

"She's called the _Black Cat_," Jerry explains. "The Barretts were friends of Terrence. You know, before… so, uh, Blaise and I already know them and all so…" His speech is stuttering, and he seems nervous, so Blaise picks up for him.

"They let some crew go, and they're looking for a few new people, for a few months at least, but maybe longer." He backtracks a bit. "We've been a bit restless down here, you know? Shipyard work isn't really our thing. We're just- well... Anyway, we both asked to join, and they said they'd take us. We'll probably be leaving in a week or two. They haven't said just when yet."

Amanda is as upbeat as Blair has ever seen her, and she wishes them well and tells them they'd better come back as soon as they can for a visit. She's found her place in her new home. Even Lacey seems glad, if not enthusiastic, at the prospect of two of the four people she now knows best leaving, possibly for a very long time, and Blair is pleased to see how far she's come since they first met. She too has found a role in which she can grow.

Blair pictures herself years from now, still bringing trays of drinks to the travelers that swagger into the inn, hands callused and mouths spilling stories of their exploits in the endless darkness of space and the dozens of planets they've traversed, but realizes that this vision isn't fair. Auntie Yasmin would be accommodating, and would surely help her find a new role if she wanted one. Hell, she could ask her to run the place one day. Old as she must be, she'll be needing to retire sooner or later.

Blaise is breaking his scowling habit and confessing that he can't resist the call of the sky. "I'm from Reach originally. I don't think I ever told you guys about home. It's huge… there were a million reasons for me to stay home, but I just couldn't help it."

"How come?" Blair inquires.

He shrugs his shoulders, but not to dismiss her question. It seems to be a nervous tic. "Have you ever looked up and just… I don't know, I guess I couldn't dig my roots on the ground. I know it doesn't really make sense."

_All I wanted was to stay home, but my roots were pulled out_. Surely this ground is rich; it's a place she can call home, a place where she can take root again. _Maybe I don't want a new planet_. She makes up her mind. If the universe wants to pull her out of the dirt and throw her into space, then she'll take the whole sky for herself.

"It's like an itch. I felt like I was sitting in a room with a closed door, looking at the sky through the window and contenting myself with that little patch of stars when I could walk through the door and see them for myself." He searches for understanding in Blair's face. "You know what I mean?"

She nods and gathers her courage to speak the words she fears they won't accept. "I want to come with you."

The boys just stare. "...You mean to come see us off? Yeah, of course."

Blair glances at the girls and sees that they don't share Blaise and Jerry's confusion about her meaning. In fact, looks of sad resignation creep onto both Amanda and Lacey's faces, as if they had been expecting this**. **_I guess you can't fool the people that know you best, huh?_

"Crap." Lacey eyes Amanda. "Just this once, 'Manda, I wish you were wrong."

"Yeah, Lace, so do I..."

Blair frowns. "I was that obvious?"

"Wait, wait, wait," Jerry sputters. "When you say 'I want to come with you,' you don't mean- you're saying- tell me you don't mean-"

Blaise stares Blair down coolly. "You mean come with us on the ship. Full-time." She nods in confirmation. "I don't get it… why?"

She expresses to them how much she loves her new home and Auntie, and begs the girls not to be angry with her, but they're already supportive. She explains the best she can that they don't know a thing about who she was before, but it's only when she tells them that _home_ isn't an option for her anymore that Blaise and Jerry start to understand.

"...And you know, Lacey can do my job now! She's ready for it," Blair insists, and Lacey denies it, but only out of modesty. She's gained the confidence to try her hand at the job again, and Auntie Yasmin won't be hit too hard in losing one bus girl.

Blaise insists that even if he did really agree with her decision, Sid and Nygus Barrett don't hire people that they don't personally trust, and she makes up her mind if Blaise can't- or won't- help, then she'll just have to go down to the docks and apply for the position alone.

_I'd have it no other way_. No more dependence.

* * *

The next night she's due for a two-to-twelve shift, so she wakes up bright and early to weave her way through Battentown's winding shipyard district in search of the vessel belonging to the Barretts. She wanders through the dusty asphalt streets asking about a ship called the _Black Cat_.

Eventually, she's directed to a large, sleek, black vessel with a ramp opened down from the hull of the ship, and finds herself face to face with a silver-haired woman in aviator-style shades and a beach chair. Blair approaches with confidence in her step and steel in her eyes.

"I'm looking for the _Black Cat._"

"You found her," the wispy woman responds tersely.

In examining her more closely, Blair notices that in spite of her silver hair, the woman doesn't have a single wrinkle on her face. With an accent that Blair doesn't recognize, she adds, "What's your business?"

"I heard you have a vacancy."

The woman pays her closer attention now. In fact, she tips her glasses down her nose and examines Blair from head to toe like she's a dress she might be interested in buying. _Surely this isn't one of the Barretts. She looks no older than me, except for the weird hair._

"Wait here," the girl says, and turns on a heel. She disappears into the ship, and returns a minute later with a tall, heavily tattooed man in corn-rows, and an equally athletic woman, her dark skin covered by an alarming quantity of bandages.

The woman scans her with her arms crossed for long enough to make Blair conscious of how she looks, and how she's positioned her arms, and _nobody stands like this_. She shoves the self-consciousness away like it's invading her personal space. She crosses her arms, puffs out her chest, and looks the woman over top to bottom in return until she finally meets her eyes.

When Blair doesn't break eye contact after a full ten seconds, the woman lets out a smirk and ends the brief staring contest that Blair realizes was essentially a weird little game of chicken. "I hear you're interested in a job. Follow me."

* * *

Blair is out of her depth. That much she learns quickly. Not only has she never traveled as crew on a vessel of any kind before, but she has almost no experience repairing anything space-capable, let alone a corvette like the _Black Cat_. As if that weren't enough, it hadn't occurred to her that since Jerry is a mechanic, and one with presumably a significant amount of experience and an in with his new employers, she would be redundant in that position. And what else does she have to her name? A fake name and four months at a tavern. _Blair Nekova, waitress. Brilliant._

Sid, the muscle-bound man with the dead stare, and Nygus, the gauze-wrapped woman with the penetrating gaze, both appear wholly unimpressed by her oral resume.

"So just to be clear," Sid sighs, "You work at Madame Yasmin's as a waitress, you've never crewed on a ship, and your experience as a repair-woman is limited to non-space machinery."

"Listen, girl," Nygus picks up, "This is serious business. We're not a postal company. Some of what we do is dangerous, and we need someone who we know we can rely on. This isn't a line of work people choose, so I don't know why you're here, but if you don't like your boss or you're frustrated with your job or something, I'm sure you can find another."

"Miss Nygus, it's not like that."

"Just Nygus is fine."

"Nygus, then. It's not about my job. I'm great at my job and my boss loves me. I have nothing to complain about. I genuinely want to do this, and I know that I can. If there's some way I can prove it-"

Sid puts a hand up to interject. "Blair. How old are you? Twenty? Twenty-two?"

"Nineteen now, sir."

"Nineteen. And for the love of god, don't call me sir. I'm not even your captain." He raises a hand, as if to soften the blow he expects his words to deliver. "I'm not saying this to look down on you, but you're barely an adult. I don't know your life, kid, but don't run from home just because things seem a little rough now and then. Roost can be a tough place to live, I know, but it's not so bad, and you said yourself that you like your job. Maybe you think this is the right decision now, but we wouldn't want to regret it later. This is what you do when you have no other good options."

_No other good options. People don't choose this._

Nygus cuts her off before she can retort, and when Blair sees the glossy look in her eyes, her words die in her throat. "Believe us, dear. We've seen the war up close, and you should be thankful you still have a home." After a pause, she speaks again, this time a bit more softly. "This is a good place. There are worse things than staying put."

Blair's shoulders sag, and she lowers her gaze to the tabletop. A few moments pass, and Sid and Nygus exchange a quick glance of concern. Finally, Sid breaks the silence.

"Hey, don't take it too hard. To be honest, we wouldn't normally hire someone without experience on a ship, anyway. Or at least a very good recommendation." He chuckles heartily, but upon receiving no response, clears his throat and swiftly shuts up. Blair perks up at his words.

She speaks quickly. "A recommendation then? A recommendation would do it?" Once again, the couple exchanges a look of concern, and Nygus opens her mouth to answer, but Blair continues. "Blaise and Jerry would vouch for me."

"Ah, right. Well, they do like Madame's bar. You probably know that Madame Yasmin is actually Jerry's aunt, but I meant more along the lines of-"

"Sorry, I don't mean to interrupt, but you don't underst- look, just… let me start over. Please." Blair sits up straight, and this time she doesn't put on a mask of composure. "My name is Blair Nekova. I'm nineteen years old. I am from the city of Abaskun on the planet Arcadia. I came to Roost on the _Nightfall_. I'm sure Blaise and Jerry would tell you more about that, if they haven't already. I'm not running from home, and I don't have anything to leave behind."

She realizes with surprise that her hands are almost shaking, and that she needs to breathe, so she takes a moment to inhale and exhale before continuing calmly. "I was a mechanic back home, with my dad. Since then, I've survived the Covenant and the _Nightfall_, I've killed a man who threatened my lives and the lives of my friends, and I've learned to excel at a job I've never done before on a planet I had never even heard of until a few months ago. So when you ask me what I have to offer, I don't have a real answer for you, because I honestly don't know what else I'm capable of. Please, just give me a chance. I'm a fast learner. I promise I won't disappoint you… please."

Sid stares as if in a daze, and Blair can practically see the gears churning behind Nygus's eyes as she digests Blair's words. Finally, Nygus leans back in her chair and cocks her head towards Sid. He shares a charged look with Nygus, who somehow manages to appear smug behind the strips of cloth concealing much of her face.

"Shit." He lays his arms down on the table and rests his forehead on them. "You're gonna hire her, aren't you…"

Nygus's mile-wide smile is the brightest thing Blair has seen in weeks.

* * *

Blair breaks the news to the girls, and the permanence of it falls over them. She shrugs it off lightheartedly, and tells them that she'll come back to visit, but they know it won't be up to her to decide where she goes, or when. The days between getting the job and her departure merge into one unending period of limbo, and it seems as if time is standing still between _too early to start packing_ and _time to say goodbye_.

She wonders if this is what it would have been like if, in another life, she had the opportunity to leave Arcadia voluntarily, her father and her friends and neighbors and _him_ all waving goodbye as she boarded a much more honest and well-maintained ship than the _Nightfall_, with her sights set on some shiny speck in the sky. The fantasy doesn't ring true, even in her imagination. Why would she ever leave? She'd stay and grow old there_._

She stops herself from going back down that mental path, and finds that the bitterness that used to lurk in the back of her chest isn't so potent anymore. She pictures it leaking out through her chest and onto the sandy tile floor of the Tavern while she runs between tables full of customers with cups and plates and platters in her hands and a grin on her face. She watches as it seeps through the floor and into the dusty soil of Roost, and thinks of it no more.

When the night before her departure arrives, the girls stay up late together, not speaking much, lying side by side in their shared room and drinking in the last few hours the three of them would have together. Blair wonders if they could ever have been friends if they had met on Arcadia under normal circumstances. She briefly pictures herself walking down the streets of Abaskun with her two companions walking next to her. The image is something out of a dream, unattainable, but it fills her with contentment so deep that it makes her want to cry in relief. They fall asleep sprawled out next to each other on the floor, Amanda's head leaning against hers on her right and Lacey using Blair's left shoulder as a pillow.

In the morning, she packs her few belongings, her clothes and the money she's saved, and hugs her two friends. They say "_see you later_." Madame Yasmin meets her at the door and scolds her affectionately, as only she could.

"You're one of mine now, girl," the innkeeper sighs. "Come back to me sometime. Don't be a stranger like my stupid nephew."

With a sad smile, Blair agrees to return for a visit, and when Blaise and Jerry lug their cases down the stairs and say their goodbyes, the three new crewmates set off for the _Black Cat_ without looking back.

* * *

_When we got here five years ago, I wasn't really thinking much about how things might change. Each day was enough of a struggle on its own, and daydreaming or worrying about tomorrow didn't seem valid. It was no wonder I shut up into myself. Just pushing out of bed and putting one foot in front of the other was hard enough without having to make small talk with strangers. _

_I guess that's why the kitchen suited me so well. I mean, I knew a thing or two about cooking, and I've always had a knack for it, but at the time it was a place I could forget about later and focus on now. The next order was all there was, and the other guys and girls in white aprons knew better than to pry. I think I might have auntie to thank for that. Good old auntie. She's an angel, that one, an angel in the garb of a grouchy, wily, kind old lady._

_It may just be that my memory of her has grown blurry over time, but I think Blair was different from the beginning. There was something off about her from the day I met her. Granted, the destruction of your home planet would eliminate all semblance of normalcy for anyone that was normal to begin with, but she didn't change into someone other than herself when it all happened. I looked inwards and didn't let anything touch me, while Lacey turned inside out and couldn't stem the flood of her emotions, but Blair adapted. _

_She succeeded at everything she did. She could get Lacey to stop crying in those first days on the ship off Arcadia, and she even got me to talk to her; she got us out of the situation we were in using her own two hands; she fit in at the Tehran even more quickly than Lacey did, and certainly more quickly than I did. But I suspect that all of those things were reflections. At the time, I didn't know exactly who they were reflections of, I just knew that the people she became to suit each situation were only a shadow of someone I had never had the opportunity to meet, and while she was on Roost, it seemed like she was missing something that she wanted. That's how I knew she'd leave._

_I feel bad admitting this to myself, but it didn't take all that long to get used to life without Blair. I think Lace looked up to her. She had relied on Blair a bit, and thought of her as a person she could hide behind, before she got back on her own two feet. As long as Blair had a swing in her step, everything was okay for Lace, and she knew she'd make it through her day. I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel the same way for the first few months... and yet, even Lacey adjusted. Auntie had given us confidence, and Lacey felt ready to fill the need when Blair left. I knew I liked that kitchen, but I swear I didn't know I'd still be at the damn place after all this time. It feels like decades ago that Blair walked out that front door with Blaise and Jerry, but I just can't shake this place, and in spite of all the annoying rebelliousness our affection eventually and inadvertently coaxed out of Lacey, even at her worst she couldn't bring herself to leave._

_For someone that's a bit of a ditz, it turns out that girl is not too bad of a bartender. I never thought I'd be served shots from a woman barely old enough to be called a woman, but here I was every night after the late shift with Alex and Elise and the rest, being served drinks at the bar by Lacey._

_Anyway, I wish I hadn't left her as soon as I did. She was old enough to take care of herself, and the rent in Battentown is dirt cheap, but she was like a sister to me. It was kind of a dick move on my part, but I justified it at the time. Alex and I got pretty serious for a while, and having him in and out of our new apartment got old fast, so moving in with him seemed like a good idea. It sucks that that didn't work out, but he wasn't what he seemed like anyway, and it was probably for the best in the long run. I'm still not sure Lacey has fully forgiven me for leaving. I tell you, the drama was fucking terrible, but she did let me come back, and life went on. I think she enjoyed pissing me off with her obnoxious new tobacco habit and her even more obnoxious boyfriends over every other night, but even for someone that's like a sister to me, there's a limit to how much of a fuck I'll give before I shut you out. Thank god that's over._

_Other than that, the awkwardness of having to interact with Alex every day at work was probably my biggest concern until auntie started to get sick. That's when the long nights at the hospital started. God were we scared... I'm still thanking whatever deity is out there for letting her live, even though she didn't have the energy to run the Tehran all on her own anymore, and also for the fact that Elise is the one she left in charge of managing it when she couldn't be there. I don't know what I'd have done if I had to deal with Alex as my immediate supervisor. Bloody fucking hell. Talk about uncomfortable._

_So four years in a new home with new friends, new fears, and entirely new lives, and yes, I guess I can admit that I left the memory of Blair behind. To be fair, I think she forgot about us first. Not once did she visit or call or send us a single word, and out of sight was out of mind. The only thing that made me or Lacey think of her was the news about the war. I'd sit up and wonder if she was out there in the thick of it somewhere on an inner planet, fighting nine-foot tall aliens with plasma rifles, or maybe out on one of the distant outer planets, removed from the UNSC and the aliens and the war, and sipping martinis on a beach with the money she'd earned. I thought morbidly that she might've been long dead, and that's why we'd never heard from her again. It would actually have been the more probable eventuality, considering how many planets had been glassed, and that the aliens had even reached Earth. When it was announced that the war was over, we drank all night and didn't open until six in the afternoon the next day. Hell, no one did. That was about the last we thought of her though. Life moves on, right? Maybe she'd just decided to bury us with her old memories. She might've built herself a new life just like we did, and it was business as usual from there._

_So: business as usual. Most of our customers have either been to the Tehran before, or they come with someone who has. There aren't a lot of strangers here, even among the shipyard workers and the crews of space-bound ships. Most everyone knows the Madame, and they know better than to straggle in once we're closed. So one Thursday night, someone pushed our doors open half an hour after we'd cleaned up for the evening. It was just Lacey and the new guy behind the bar, and just a few of the helpers from the kitchen still hanging around. Elise had just walked out the door not a minute ago after finishing up the bookkeeping, and it was Alex's day off. _

_The figure in the doorway wasn't large, but it was imposing. It was a she, and she was wearing all black: a bizarre wide brimmed hat pulled low past her eyes, dark combat boots with some badass matching thigh-highs, a pistol strapped to her shorts, and not a whole lot of vest covering her upper half. Thank god for her pitch-black overcoat, which looked a bit too warm for an arid place like Battentown. As she swaggered up slowly to the bar, I got up from my stool to inform the odd-looking visitor, who I assumed was from off-planet, that we were closed. Then she got close enough for the bar lamps to shed some light under the brim of that hat, and suddenly the swing of her hips matched the face I saw in front of me._

_I'd be lying if I said my jaw didn't drop to the goddamn floor, and I could tell that Lacey had connected the dots too, because she dropped the bottle of whatever liquor she was holding at the sight of our forgotten sister, in the flesh, reborn before our very eyes in an image for which I have no single word or phrase. She was a beautiful mercenary dressed in night, carrying with her an inexplicable strength of presence, hair dipped in purple and eyes so sharp they practically glowed like the irises of a cat at midnight. If what I saw of her four years ago were only her reflections, it was on that night that I saw Blair face to face for the first time._


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: Thank you guys for the positive feedback you've given since the last chapter! It really makes writing this story feel worthwhile, and I appreciate the support. I'd love to hear what you think of this one.**

**For future reference, ONI refers to the Office of Naval Intelligence. They're the military branch involved in spying, the black ops of the UNSC. Shady stuff.**

**As always, an enormous thank you to raining-down-hearts for her fantastic beta work (and for advertising my fic for me, thank you friend).**

**Revival Part Three**

"_Have you seen him yet?"_

The cheap comms unit in her ear buzzes with the low-quality transmission, and gritting her teeth, Blair pulls her eye away from the lens of the rifle's scope. _Interrupt me one more time._ She contemplates the repercussions of tossing the stupid earpiece off the three-story roof and being done with it. Sid might scold her, but it isn't that valuable, is it?

"What?" she spits out.

_"Have you seen-"_

"No, I haven't seen him, and if I do- _I._ Will call. _You._"

_"Alright, bitch, take the attitude down a notch. I'm just-"_

Fuming, she clicks the earpiece off and drops it to the floor. She quickly snatches it back up and sticks it in her pocket, as the fact that it's raining and it's probably not waterproof overrides her temper. She feels a pang of guilt in the back of her mind, because she knows it's not fair for her to take out her frustration on Eruka. Between having the jitters from finally having a serious role in a job and the unanticipated rain making it a challenge just to see the ground below her, Blair has been on edge since before Eruka started nagging.

She places her eye back to the task of monitoring the area around the designated address and keeping an eye out for the owner of what they're stealing. A cold breeze wraps itself crisply around her exposed forearms and she curses Cascade's second-rate meteorology and unpredictable weather systems.

_"Twenty-four degrees and sunny today!" _the golden-haired rail of a man had declared with enthusiasm on the local news. _Sunny with a chance of snow. Fuckin' Cascade. Should've packed a bikini and a parka._ No other planets she's been to have had such maddeningly variable weather, and she's been to quite a few. Some more stoic part of her takes pleasure in the novelty of it- the new sights, smells, and tastes of planets she'd never known before. When she gushes her excitement to the boys, Sid gets that thousand yard stare like he's remembering things he wishes he couldn't, and Nygus's eyelids droop with the weight of her memories. The one time she prodded them about _why_, the best answer she can get is _"I wish you could have seen them all, girl. There were so many more."_

She remembers the first time she actually thought to question why Nygus is almost always wrapped in bandages, and why Sid's skin sports patches of mottled discoloration, and it makes her wonder whether in those moments they're remembering the beauty of the places they've seen or the horror of the war that destroyed them, whether it's even possible to think of one without the other. It's the tranquility of an outpost on a cool blue glacier planet, forever bound to the vibrant turquoise heat of a plasma grenade, noticed a moment too late to prevent the searing of flesh and muscle. It's the sounds of a living city surrounded by sandy bamboo forests, inseparable from the detonation of a spike grenade so full of pointed shrapnel that even a full can of biofoam can barely salvage the lives of those around it. It seems that no one outlives so many planets without a cost- Sid came through with swaths of skin turned an unnatural grayish blue, as if constantly starved of oxygen, and Nygus with nerve endings across her torso and face so badly crippled that they alternate between numbness and pain. It's only their hope that keeps her excited about the things she has yet to see. If they could make a life after theirs were meant to have ended- well, it just goes to show that you can't give up even if you're supposed to be dead.

Blair almost doesn't see him, she's been waiting so long, and she's thankful to be shaken from her trance by the sight of the man's awkward ramrod-straight posture and silly-looking gait in his suit and tie. She breathes a sigh of relief. Sid would never let her hear the end of it when they got back to the _Black Cat_ if the man had burst into his apartment to find him, Eruka, and Nygus ransacking it. Eruka would slide that slimy, infuriating smirk at her-

_Earth to Blair_, she tells herself in Nygus's voice. The image of her boss with her hands on her hips and an eyebrow quirked up brings a grin to her face. She pulls away from the scope again and presses in on her earpiece to put it back online. "He's on the street. He'll be at the front door in about thirty seconds."

There's a pause, in which Blair regrets her short fuse and wonders if her crewmate has turned her own earpiece off. They should've invested in a few more, but apparently spending money on additional comms would be _wasteful_.

"Got it." At least one of them is mature enough to stay professional. Blair puts her finger to her earpiece as the poor sod saunters towards the doorway to his apartment building, and she's about to tell her crew that their time is up when Eruka cuts in again. "Alright, we're out. We'll swing back around your building to pick you up."

Blair breathes a sigh of relief and her shoulders slump in relaxation. She slings the rifle over her shoulder and slinks towards the roof's stairwell as she makes another transmission. "Okay. Good work, Eruka." She makes it to the ground floor before she hears the other girl's voice in her ear again.

"Hey, Blair? You're still a bitch."

A sly grin spreads onto her face and she halts at the bottom of the stairwell to speak into the mic with the most sugary voice she can muster. "Aww, I love you too, _Froggy!_" Blair cackles at the angry squawking in her ear as she pushes open the double doors and disappears into the cover of rain.

* * *

The client's sticky fingers reach out to pluck the file from Sid's extended hand, and Blair marvels briefly at the price that the right stack of papers will fetch. _Eibon Program_, the cover reads, and she wonders just what kind of secrets they're stealing. They couldn't be anything so precious, if they were so poorly guarded, but then they may not have belonged to the man they were stolen from either. Blaise had commented on the strangeness of stealing military information for the military, and it mad struck her for the first time just how little she knew of what their work accomplished.

The thought of faking the documents crosses her mind, but she berates herself with Sid's words for even entertaining the thought. _"This relationship is built on mutual trust."_

_Trust_ is not the first word that springs to mind when she describes the weaselly man poring over the papers they delivered. She tries to pinpoint what exactly bothers her about him, but her scrutiny is unrewarding, and she's unable to isolate any one specific aspect of his appearance that's particularly off-putting. It's the entire persona that turns her off- his collared shirt just formal enough to convey the appearance of a legitimate businessman, and his expressive hands, plastic grin, and roving eyes just off-kilter enough to instill in her a suspicion that his words don't match his intentions.

_Shifty_. Still, he hasn't set them up, and they haven't tried to screw him over. It's been three months, but she's still not sure where exactly he stands on the legal spectrum, or where they do, for that matter. Nygus hadn't told her outright, but she had hinted at the fine line between asset and liability that this client walks with his employers. He doesn't tell the people he hires who gave him the assignments he hires for- none of them really care, as long as they're paid. It doesn't stop them wondering how much of what he asks for is for him, rather than his employers. _Stealing military documents for the military. Doesn't make a lot of sense._

Sid's voice becomes a bark. "You're joking, right?"

"Look, that's all I can give you right now. Sorry," the client chuckles unapologetically.

Someone unfamiliar with Sid might not notice the edge in his voice, given that he's still speaking civilly, but Blair doesn't miss it. "That is not what we agreed on."

"That's all I can afford to pay, Barrett."

"If you can't afford to pay, then you shouldn't be hiring." Sid grabs hold of the files he just handed the smaller man, and doesn't let go. "And you _can_ pay. You just don't want to. If you like the idea of having your jobs done in the future, you might not want to sleep so deeply on that UNSC money."

_So much for civil_.

The teeth Shifty Weasel flashes barely conceal his anger. He must not like having his character called into question, judging by the tone in which he answers Sid. He speaks in a subdued voice, but she catches the phrases "you know who I work for," and "never work again," and finally, "fucking_ ghost_," spoken with a sneer.

Blair feels a twisted sense of pleasure in what happens next, and Eruka and Blaise both snicker next to her as she looks on. Sid's guffaws sound a bit too loud for the setting, and he claps the man over the shoulder like he's just told a particularly entertaining joke. The client's few employees that bustle about the warehouse linger briefly, before deeming the situation harmless, but Weasel squirms under the ex-marine's vice-like grip.

Quieting down abruptly, Sid speaks to the man with a grin on his face like he's telling him what he ate for dinner last night, but his words aren't quite so frivolous. "The way I think of it is that we know a lot of the same people, but I've known them longer. He chuckles jovially, "and you know they like me better than they like you. You're not the only source of income for us, Noah, but if you can't find anyone that'll take your jobs… well, then you're just one more loose end for ONI to tie off, aren't you?"

Noah gulps visibly, and his shoulders stay tensed even after Sid releases him. "Just a little food for thought, you know? Pay the people you hire, and they'll come back to work more. It's gotten you this far, hasn't it?"

Once the topic of payment has been settled, and they're back inside the hangar of the _Black Cat_, Sid tosses the wad of bills off to Eruka, who buries it in a pocket somewhere inside that ugly black-and-white mess of polka dots. "Figure out what we need and we'll stop off at Reach."

* * *

"Remember to buy broccoli this time, and real chicken!" Eruka calls out to Sid in her usual monotone.

"Yeah, yeah. Vegetables, meat, got it," he grumbles as he walks away from the pelican dropship they'd landed in a small civilian dock.

"No, not meat, _chicken!_ And don't come back saying they were too expensive! I don't care how much they cost. We have enough this time."

Sid doesn't bother to give an actual reply this time, opting to give a lazy wave of his hand over his shoulder. Based on what she's seen of Sid's diet and the typical contents of the ship's larder, Sid Barrett has a grudge against everything green and leafy.

"Stubborn brat never gets anything I like. I've had enough condensed protein to last me the rest of my life, and I'm never eating dog again," Eruka mutters half to herself as she turns back around towards the dropship. "Cheap bastard." It's the subtleties- _never_ and _always_ and the way they trust her to manage the ship's budget or to stay behind with it alone, if necessary- that tell her more about Eruka's place in the _Black Cat_ than any of its three core members ever do.

_They trust her_.

Blair stands with hands on her hips and takes in the view from the small-town dock. On a heavily populated inner colony like Reach, Blair expects everything to be massive- big ships, big cities, huge UNSC presence- and her preconceptions were proven true by their brief trip into one of the larger urban areas. Everything had been ten times the scale of anything she had seen on Arcadia, or Roost. She's glad to see that the tranquility of her own hometown exists even on core planets like Reach. The orange-red sun hangs high over the rolling green hills and low buildings of the nearby town, but a gentle breeze tickles her nose and keeps the heat from resting on her shoulders.

_The Barretts trust her, and I trust the Barretts._

Eruka drags a fold-out chair to where she had been standing and throws it open. She plops into it and pulls a pair of shades onto her face, only to then tilt that strange, pointy hat she wears just down over her eyes already shaded eyes.

"Why didn't you just go with him?"

Eruka hesitates, ultimately deciding only to say that she doesn't care _that_ much.

Blair figures she just knows better than to waste such beautiful weather running errands, especially since they don't always get to rest on land for long, and doubling back to the dropship, she decides to follow suit. The fold-out chair she finds in the storage unit is a frail thing made of wood and straw, and it can't possibly owe its continued place in the _Black Cat's_ inventoryto anything other than sentimental value. The seat and back are torn at the edges, the legs creak in complaint when she picks it up, and she can only imagine the original shape of the armrests, which are worn down like whittled sticks. In fact, they look like they actually _have_ been whittled.

_Could it have been Sid? It definitely wasn't Nygus. _If she were to ask, Sid would deny it and pretend to be affronted. _"That's not the kind of man I am," _he'd probably say, but that's his answer to any question of _why_ that he doesn't feel like answering properly.

Praying that it doesn't fall to pieces, Blair gingerly places the old relic down next to Eruka and sits slowly, as if she's worried that putting all her weight down at once might cause it to shatter. Rather than laying back and drinking in the sunlight, Blair sits on the edge of her chair and peers at her petite crewmate's face.

She still hasn't figured out just how old Eruka is. For all she knows, they could be the same age. Her face could be eighteen years old. Her unusually straight, chrome hair could belong to someone twenty years older, though she knows it's not unheard of for someone to start graying in their twenties.

It takes almost a minute for Eruka to take a tiny peek out of the corner of her eyes and jump back at the sight of Blair's face hovering so near own. "What are you _doing_?!"

"Um..." The two stare at each other blankly.

"Did you.." She narrows her eyes and eyes Blair with a look of disgust. "Did you draw on my face?"

"No! ...that's a great idea though."

Eruka growls in exasperation.

"Maybe next time."

"Why didn't _you_ go with Sid?"

"It's too nice out to grocery shopping."

"Actually, why did you come down here with us?"

Blair laughs at her. "Valuable bonding time, obviously."

Eruka groans, pulls her hat lower over her face, and makes a valiant effort to look like she's near sleep.

Blair snorts. "Were you afraid I was gonna kiss you, or something? Don't worry, Froggy, you're not really my type, though the dark, mysterious thing is kind of intriguing."

"Holy shit. Please shut up."

"Look, I'm sorry, Eruka. I just don't feel that way."

"Okay- personal space?"

"_Fine_. You're no fun."

"I can't believe you're even still on this ship," Eruka mutters under her breath.

Blair's amused grin slides off her face, and a brief moment passes before Eruka realizes she's finally shut the new girl up, and how she managed it. Though it had been her intention, she berates herself for achieving the result.

"I didn't mean- I wasn't being-" Eruka stammers hastily. "Don't look at me like that! I just meant- people usually don't stay with us more than one or two jobs, and you're starting to be… permanent." Eruka massages her temples in frustration.

"Wow... sorry."

"Oh. No- I mean-" Eruka growls in frustration. "Blair, you're obnoxious. That's what I meant. You're doing fine, everyone likes you, you're good at your job, and you're a good crewmate. You're just a pain in my ass right now, because I'm trying to enjoy the peace and quiet and you're making it not peaceful or quiet. Just chill for all of two minutes. 'Kay?"

That might be the most Blair has heard Eruka speak at one time, and she stares for a moment, while Eruka wonders if she's finally broken the newbie. Though embarrassed at having taken an offhand remark a bit too seriously, Blair recovers quickly. She gives the silver-haired girl a cocky smirk and Eruka goes right back to being annoyed at the rookie.

"I'll wear you down, Froggy. You'll see."

Eruka shoots her the biggest stink-eye Blair has ever seen and she's giggling as drops back into the chair- only that once she hits the back, she finds herself falling through it to land squarely on her ass, with pieces of wood and straw strewn around her like a little halo of debris.

It's Eruka's turn to cackle. "_Hah!_ Sid's gonna be _pissed_," she declares gleefully.

Blair sighs and lays on her back in the midst of the wreckage with resignation.

"Blair, meet karma. She's a bitch, you'll get along great," Eruka taunts.

Blair winds her legs back and kicks the back of Eruka's chair with a cheeky grin, sending her toppling to the ground. She fights back giggles as Eruka curses under her breath.

* * *

Eruka pulls off the apron and tosses it towards the nearest chair, where it lands messily before slipping off to the floor. She doesn't bother to pick it up, instead ferrying the last plateful of bacon over to the table around which the rest of the crew was seated, Nygus leaning back in her seat with her hands folded behind her head, and Blaise and Jerry chatting disinterestedly about the ship's outer plating or some such minutiae. Only Sid and Blair swivel to face her- forks, knives, and plates all abandoned along with any excuse for manners that could impede their ability to out-consume the other.

The plate is still in her hand- it hasn't even hit the table yet- when the two reach out with_ both hands_ to snatch as much of the meat as they can. About a blink of an eye later, there's one piece of bacon left, and two hands gripping it from opposite sides of the table.

"I got it first."

"So? I got it last."

"So I got it _first_, you can't _steal_ it from me!"

"I'm captain."

"_Hey!_" Blair protests.

"No pulling rank over food, Sid." Blair turns to Nygus and grins appreciatively.

"You always side with her," Sid complains. "She had more than I did, anyway." Eruka rolls her eyes so hard that she worries it might have lasting effects on her vision, and decides to go back and pick up that apron after all.

Blair catches a certain glint in Nygus's eye and knows it doesn't bode well for her. Sure enough it only takes a moment for Nygus to pounce on the opportunity. "I can think of a good way to decide this," she says, and Blair groans.

"Can't we just play rocks-paper-scissors or flip a coin or something?

"Is that you forfeiting?" Sid replies, and the taunt behind his question is all it takes to reverse Blair's position on the whole issue.

"Hell no. It's mine."

Dropping the bacon, which is now merely an excuse, both Sid and Blair stand and stride out towards the training room in full force, with Nygus following swiftly behind.

"Next payment says Sid wins," Jerry quips.

"I'll take that bet."

Just like that, her two other crewmates flee the room and leave Eruka all on her own, wondering what ever happened to a quiet, ordinary breakfast.

* * *

Sid is not quick, but unfortunately he is sufficiently agile and still packs quite a wallop. Thanks to hours of Nygus's constant tips while practicing to _dodge with minimum energy expended_, Blair manages to mostly restrict Sid to glancing blows. Landing a solid hit on him is another matter altogether. She could probably throw punch after punch for hours and none would land on anything but his forearms, always moving _just_ as far as necessary to block her jabs.

It's only after exchanging cautious blows for a few minutes that Sid steps up the aggression. Ducking lower to bring down his center of gravity, he begins to throw successive attacks- a jab towards her face followed by a wide swing or a heavy uppercut. Blair hears Nygus calling out, "_Fight with your head, not your body,_" and isn't sure if Nygus is actually speaking or if the line has just been drilled into her mind so hard that it's surfacing now that she needs it. In any case, she ducks and counters, careful to avoid stepping too far backwards out of the circle or putting her full weight behind a punch and being caught flat-footed. The strategy keeps him just off balance enough to prevent his fist from connecting with her head, and she wonders if she can wear him down. It's a risky idea, considering that she's never seen him go at it for long enough- his usual victories against Blaise and Jerry are swift, as are his invariable losses to Nygus.

Having put enough confidence in her endurance, she's just resolved to stick to the strategy of attrition, when she sees an opening. He leaves a misplaced jab out just a _second_ too long, and Blair's right arm bursts forwards. She executes the cross in good form that Nygus would be proud of, her weight shifting to her left foot with the swing of her hips. Blair is confident that the punch will land on the cheek of Sid's padded helmet. There's no way he can bring his body back fast enough- except that instead of trying to move out of her way, he shoves straight into her.

His shoulder slams against her own and she realizes with a sudden tilt backwards that his foot is also wedged behind hers. She's lost her balance completely, and she knows even as her punch glances off his chin that she's fallen for a trick. She falls her flat on her back with a loud thud, and the match is over.

Blaise looks away, cursing under his breath, and Jerry snickers at him. Only Eruka, who Blair hadn't noticed before, retains a blank expression.

"Better luck next time, missy," Sid says as he begins unraveling the cloth from his fists. Before he can make it out of the sparring circle, he's stopped short by Nygus, who approaches cracking her knuckles and stretching her neck.

"Actually, I'm feeling like a little snack myself."

He stalls briefly. "I, ah, think I'm done, and besides, we said one match-"

"No we didn't."

"Didn't we?"

"Come on, _Sidney_. You chickening out on me?"

"You don't have a helmet," he remarks upon noting that she's already wrapped her hands. She smirks, and Blair peels herself off the floor to crawl out of bounds.

"I'm not gonna need it."

Sid puts up his hands, his face betraying his trepidation, and in an instant Nygus is a blur. Blair notices right away that Sid is using advice Nygus had given her in the past. _Throw too little weight behind your fist and it'll be a weak punch. Put too much weight behind your fist and you'll be a sitting duck. _Sid's counters, when he can squeeze them in, move his body forwards, but snap back just as quickly to guard his face. He's careful not to give Nygus an opportunity to use his weight against him.

Jerry whistles in admiration at the incredible display of agility and athleticism being put on by their two co-captains. It can no longer properly be called boxing, as Sid had taught it to her, and couldn't quite be pinned down as any of the other martial arts Nygus favors, the names of which Blair can never keep straight. All four junior members of the _Black Cat_ look on in awe as Nygus launches an aerial kick at Sid's gut. He catches it in an attempt to flip her end over end, only for her to land effortlessly like a feline.

Anticipating that he would attempt to take advantage of her unguarded state, Nygus launches herself with both fists at Sid's torso in a rabbit-like leap so quick that he doubles over from the impact. All that remains is for Nygus to grab the back of his helmet and yank it off his head, and he puts both hands up in surrender.

"Mercy, woman, mercy. Hell..."

From what Blair can recall, Sid hadn't thrown a single hit Nygus hadn't blocked or avoided entirely. "Fight to your strengths," she announces smugly as she unwraps the cloth from her fists and heads towards the exit.

Nobody looks surprised at the results of the second sparring match, and Blair shoots Sid the cheesiest smile she can muster.

"Yeah, yeah," he grunts. "Laugh it up."

"You really know how to pick a woman," Blair chuckles.

"The first day we met, she gave me a black eye."

"So romantic."

"It was love at first sight."

Blair doesn't bother to stifle a laugh at the image of a lovestruck Sid with an icepack on his face and an angry Nygus with her hands on her hips.

"Remind me never to piss her off," Blaise mutters as they leave for the common room. When the five of them arrive, they find Nygus munching triumphantly on the last piece of bacon. She smiles mockingly with her mouth full and Sid and Blair both get the odd feeling that they've been set up.

* * *

With an tattoo in the place of an eyebrow, a discolored left eye, wolfish canines, and wiry hair framing his face, the man's mugshot and profile practically pop off the screen.

"He's an ex-freelancer turned UNSC, hired as part of some experimental special ops program- some desperate measure for combating the Covenant, or maybe the insurrection. From what I've managed to find out, it's some sketchy stuff- physical augmentation, implanted tech, the whole nine yards."

Jerry gives a low whistle in surprise, and Nygus remains impassive.

"He stole something and ran. Whether it was tech or classified information, they wouldn't tell. Either way, they want him alive," Sid finishes. They're all gathered in the bridge of the _Black Cat_, and they're pensive as they let the information sink in.

"So it's the stolen goods they want intact," Blaise chimes in thoughtfully, "but since we don't know what the goods are,"

"We have to catch him alive," Eruka finishes.

They all skim through the text under the fugitive's pictures in silence, with the exception of Sid, who is already familiar with the content he presented them with. The abnormalities in the target's profile make Blair bite her lip anxiously. "Is this right? Two point one meters, one hundred forty kilos?"

Not for the first time that night, Jerry wears a look of shock that would be comical, if they weren't on the topic of business. "This guy is a monster," he mutters as he reviews the data on the monitor.

"So when you say we're going to catch him," Blair continues, "you mean we're going to wound him or sedate him- and he could have some crazy experimental tech or advanced weaponry that we don't, so we'll have to catch him by surprise."

Nygus's face breaks into the smile of a proud teacher. "Now you're thinking smart."

"Getting ahead of yourself though," Sid butts in. "We have to find him first, and the intel isn't that fresh. The most recent sighting was eighteen days ago on Sedra, and it'll take probably two days to get there. So almost three-week-old info."

Nygus's face drops, but it's quickly replaced by a mask of concentration. "Unless he's a complete dumbass, he'll know someone is still tailing him." After a few moments of shared looks of anticipation, Nygus is the first to stir from the introspection. "So," she pipes in a low voice, "Sedra. Let's go hunting."

* * *

She holds up the syringe towards the ceiling light. It's thin, short, and made of some synthetic material she would guess is ordinary plastic, except that it feels as hard as steel. For all Blair knows, it could be what's inside that's heavy, but it's more pleasant to believe that the container is made of a military-grade material worthy of being used as plating on a spaceship than it is to think that the liquid they'll be injecting someone with is something so dense that ten milliliters of it weighs as much as a steel pipe. She can't honestly distinguish the liquid inside from water; it's colorless and looks completely unremarkable. Either way, none of it looks like it's made for medical use.

"And where did you pick up this wonderful concoction?" Eruka inquires.

"From the good doctor, of course," Sid answers.

Blair lowers the syringe and sees Eruka shiver in response next to her, and turn to shoot Sid a look that could curdle milk.

"Is it the stitches and hardware that creep you out?".

"No, it's that he might steal my kidneys while I'm not paying attention," Eruka responds wryly.

_Ah, yes. I did get that impression._

"He might, but he's the best there is, and he's got friends in high places," Sid points out practically. "Possibly even connections with ONI, though he'd never admit that."

"Wait," Blair interrupts. "We didn't even go anywhere."

"No, I bumped into him on the street while I was on my way to buy some cleaning oil for the firearms and asked if he had anything that could take out something big for a few hours without killing them."

After processing this for a moment, it occurs to her that this means he had the syringe on him, for no particular reason_._ She whispers to Eruka, "If I ever get sick-"

"Yup. Got you covered."

Blair eyes her sideways.

"Don't worry. Not even I'm _that_ mean."

* * *

She's set up the little box-shaped contraption exactly the way Jerry had instructed- with the flashing lights facing up and within five feet of the slipspace drive- so after checking over her work carefully, she flips the little green switch expectantly. Nothing happens. She glances at Eruka and finds that she was also watching with anticipation. Eruka looks up from the small machine to Blair and shrugs, so Blair stands and brushes off her knees. Eruka has performed a similar job on the other side of the slipspace drive, so their work here is done. Feeling a tad disappointed at the anticlimax, Blair remembers Jerry's description.

_Grav-wells don't actually create gravity. They send out a signal that fools a ship's system into thinking that it's right next to a mass the size of a small planet, roughly a trillion tons each. Since the slipspace drive is usually set up through the ship's main systems, if you can get the ship to think it's too close to a planet to jump, it'll halt all activity for the slipspace drive. You could just override it, but most people won't take the chance that they'll be sending themselves hurtling into dead space, light years from the nearest star._

Blair gives the room one last cursory glance. The walls are sleek gray panels and the floor a dusty, unpolished black that give off an entirely unwelcoming vibe, in spite of the ship's good condition. Regardless of its value, she wouldn't want to sleep on this boat. "Mission accomplished. I don't know why I thought this would be more exciting."

"The less exciting a mission is, the better." Eruka yawns wide. "We could _so_ have done this during the day."

"Well, if your snoring is gonna keep me up anyway, I might as well be doing something useful."

"You're all drama queens. So I snore a little. Big deal."

"Acceptance is the first step, Eruka."

"Seriously, I saw the video. You're exaggerating."

"Look, we're all in agreement. You sound like a bullfrog."

"Sid and his stupid nicknames," Eruka laments. "If I were petty, I'd start calling you 'butch' or something. Nygus's training is rubbing off on you, your arms are bigger than my thighs."

"_Butch?_" Blair covers her mouth to stifle her amusement. "Did you just call me _butch?_"

Eruka chuckles and pokes her biceps. "Look at this. You're becoming a meathead like Sid."

It's just as Blair bursts out laughing that they both stumble off balance and throw their arms out for balance. It's only a moment before the floor steadies itself beneath them again, but in spite of the lack of windows, it's clear to see that they're no longer on land. Blair whips her head back in the unconscious immediate impulse telling her that the ship taking off has something to do with the devices they just placed, but a second doesn't pass before she shakes the irrational thought off.

_Someone is flying this ship._

"How did he know we're- does the ship have some kind of silent alarm?"

Blair considers it briefly, but recognizes that it's impossible for them to know why he chose this moment to leave the planet. "Maybe, or maybe he just decided to go for a spin."

They stare at each other in silence for a moment, before Eruka speaks again. "Either way, he can't jump to slip. Jerry said the ship's drive is through the system. The grav-wells should prevent it." While her words sound reassuring, her face betrays her rapidly increasing worry. "_Fuck_, Blair. If we jump…"

"I know, I_ know_…" Trying quickly to decide on a course of action, Blair eyes Eruka's pack. "Ah, are you still carrying that syringe? Or did you leave it on the ship?"

Eruka's eyes go wide and she shakes her head. "Blair."

"No, listen-"

"Blair, we can't take him."

"He doesn't even know we're on board!"

"You don't _know_ that!" Eruka cries quietly. "That might be why he's here in the first place. Blair, I didn't even bring a_ gun!_"

Blair notes that her crewmate's hands are trembling, and she remembers that while Eruka has been working with the Barretts for longer than she has, she's still only a few years older. While Nygus's constant mantra has truly had an effect on the entire crew, even physical training hasn't changed the fact that Eruka isn't built for hand-to-hand combat. _But she's the expert in going by unseen_.

She reaches out a steadying arm to Eruka's shoulder. "Hey, that's what you have me for. I'm the brawn here," she replies. "And the good looks. And the brains."

Eruka tells her to shut up, but it doesn't carry the usual tone of irritation, but instead one that sounds more like pleading for help. Blair quickly takes stock of the situation.

Honestly, the bastard picked the worst time to leave. They'd had tailed him for a full week on Coral, and while it was still terrifying to consider facing him in a fistfight, the musclebound freak had done nothing but eat cheeseburgers and down gallons of beer at local bars while they'd tailed him. He hadn't come back to his ship once since landing on Coral. They wouldn't even be on the ship if it wasn't so critical to the job.

If they didn't know for a fact that the target's ship had traveled from Dwarka to Coral in twelve hours, they would have never thought at a glance that a ship as small as his was slipspace capable. It's much too small to be a corvette, but it's not small enough to be a dropship. In fact, it doesn't fit any known classification, which is all the more reason why it would fetch some serious cash in the right market. Unique non-military class vessels stick out like a sore thumb, and some people will pay a fortune for one in good condition for the attention they attract, just as others will pay well for an unremarkable, stock military-class vessel for the exact opposite reason.

While Blair has no problem displaying confidence to calm Eruka's shaky nerves, internally she laments the likelihood of their survival. Crippling his slipspace drive would've allowed for the _Black Cat_, a much larger ship, to anchor to his while it floundered in space, and they might not have even needed Stein's toxin, since they would've been able to carry him away trapped in his own ship like an animal in a cage. Getting him out of the thing later would've been easy with a shit-ton of sleeping gas and a few gas masks, or even by besieging him in it for a few days, if they had the patience to wait for him to run out of food and water. He'd never try to contact the UNSC for help, and the pay for this mission would more than cover the cost of expenses to complete it safely. None of them had deemed it a good idea to face him down on land, even with Stein's concoction, except as a last resort. Kidnapping him would have been difficult to pull off without witnesses.

"So you have it?" Blair asks again.

Eruka nods.

Even as Eruka opens her comms unit to call the crew, Blair knows there's no way they'll all get back to the _Black Cat_ before the target figures out that he's a sitting duck and tries to correct the problem. On a ship this small, there is almost no place to hide. Jerry wouldn't try to pilot the _Black Cat_ all on his own, even if he could, and leave all the others behind on Coral if they jump to slipspace and he's forced to pursue.

_We're fucked good and proper._

Blair puts on the cockiest grin she can muster and slides her pistol out from inside her coat. "Let's go surprise this son of a bitch."

Eruka unzips her bag to retrieve the syringe and wipes beads of cold sweat from her brow. "I swear, if we live, I'm asking Sid for a raise."

* * *

His hand wraps around her wrist with blinding speed and he practically throws her by the arm. Blair experiences a split second of absolute panic as she feels her shoulder pop out of its socket, and nothing beneath her feet her, and then her whole right side screeches like a siren in pain as her full weight slams into the metal floor. She tries to throw a blanket on the fire that is the spike of fear in her gut at having been tossed across the room like a doll, and she attempts to batter down the nausea that's brought on by the sensation of her shoulder jolting abruptly back into its original position on impact. As she recovers, she spies her gun laying uselessly out of reach on the floor. In that split second, her confidence slips away.

She had been almost completely silent. Her gun had been pointed steadily at the back side of his right knee. She was ready to take the shot, and Eruka behind her to rush in and stick him with the needle, but then he had turned to face her and shortened the distance from ten feet to two in one monstrous bound, and the expression on his face had disarmed her before the fight had even properly started. He had _smiled_, mouth seemingly full of canines, all so _sharp_, and eyes wide like giant white pools she could sink into and never climb out. He was positively _gleeful_, the red pattern on his left eye and lack of iris or pupil mesmerizing her. For a fraction of a second it seemed like all she could see was _NO FUTURE, _and the next thing she knows she's airborne and Eruka is squeaking in alarm from the corridor.

Wolfman faces Eruka, and Blair pushes her every muscle that's willing to obey to scramble for the pistol a few feet from her. Even though her logic tries to tell her that it would be far better to kill him and take the hit on being offered UNSC missions in the future, some reserve of pure, stupid stubbornness to complete the job motivates her to aim for his knee. The bullet is fully-jacketed, but it travels the short gap between the barrel and the wolfman's leg, embeds itself in his lower thigh, and _doesn't come out_, and that can only be something to do with those physical augmentations they had mentioned. Then again, she's never seen someone more heavily built than Sid moving as quickly as Nygus, and that's evidence enough that this man is something beyond an AWOL marine. He flinches away from Eruka and swivels back towards Blair, the smile wiped cleanly off his face and replaced by a scowl. Blair can practically _feel_ the adrenaline pumping through her, and despite her body's aching, she can't deny that somehow this feels _good_.

She raises the barrel towards his gut, but before she can blink she's on her back again and gasping for breath, because being tackled by this monster feels like being hit by a brick wall. She kicks out and connects with his jaw and _that should really hurt_, but she barely catches sight of his fist before her left side is on_ fire,_ and _god this was a bad idea, why didn't she just aim for his head?_ She barely sees the needle stab down between his shoulder and his neck, and he stumbles backwards with an exasperated grunt and a grimace as Eruka hangs off his back, her hands covering his eyes and her legs wrapped around his waist. Blair seizes the opportunity to land a swift punch to the groin, and finally she elicits a reaction from him in the form of a furious growl.

He tosses Eruka off like a rag doll and throws the empty syringe aside. "Who _are_ you people?!" He attacks again, but this time Blair can hear Nygus's advice barked from the sidelines as she faced off with Sid. _Don't look at where he is, look at where he's going. Fight two steps ahead._ With Eruka potentially within the line of fire, Blair opts to step inside his swinging arm and land a knee to his gut. She fails once again to anticipate just how much faster this man is than anyone else she's sparred against, and she finds herself tumbling off balance with the blow to her shoulder pushing her off her one planted foot and hurting, hurting so fucking much _his bones must be made of iron_. She throws her other arm up to keep from being punched in the chin and this time she feels something in her arm break, only to be followed by a fist in her gut.

Though she does an admirable job trying to fight with her head, and even manages to throw her weight behind a cross to his nose with her good arm, it doesn't slow him down. Finally he catches her in the chin and she's down- she can't get up fast enough, she's out of _time_\- his hand finds her throat and the very real possibility of death floods over her in an instant. For a moment he squeezes and all she sees is _NO FUTURE_, but by some miracle his grip loosens and she watches him squirm in front of her. He falls to one knee, Blair catches a glimpse of Eruka's stiletto knife sliding out of his back, and she could swear her eyes are playing tricks, because it's pitch black to the handle.

"Forgot about the skinny one," wolfman mutters groggily, and falls back on his ass. "Fuckin' hurts," he moans. He puts his hands over his head and rubs his face. "Wha'd'you put in me, huh?"

_That stuff worked pretty fast. Could've worked a bit faster though._

Scanning the room with confusion on his face, he looks totally lost. Finally, he fixes his eyes on Eruka. "Hey… you're pretty cute." Eruka's face goes beet-red and she winds up to kick him, but she stops dead when he stares directly into her eyes. "Why're _you_ mad? _You_ broke into _my_ ship." His eyelids shut and his muscles relax, but his chest continues to rise and fall.

Blair doesn't even try to get up, and all she can say when Eruka rushes over and drops to her knees is "_ow_," but the look on her face is so full of fear, overflowing with concern- concern for _her_ well-being- that Blair can't help but force her mouth into a grin. She's stupid enough to indulge in a chuckle, and regrets it immediately. Her belly hurts, her ribs can't possibly be intact, and her hips have met cold solid floor too hard too many times in the last minute. Her whole body throbs.

"I'll be fine," she grunts. "Just tell them to hurry up. I think I might need a doctor."

She doesn't miss the relief in Eruka's voice when she says, "Yeah, you think?" She's yelling over the comms unit at a hundred miles per hour and Blair slumps down against the wall.

"Just don't move, they're on their way!"

"Yeah, yeah. You don't have to tell _me_," Blair grimaces at the jolts shooting up her sides. "Still," she looks to Eruka, "I had him on the ropes."

Eruka makes a face that says _okay, honey, whatever makes you feel better_, and everything hurts, but she's alive.

* * *

The first thing that Blair knows when she wakes up is that she's down to her undergarments and a hospital gown and that she's lying in soft white sheets on a thin, firm mattress. The second is that there is an IV line in the top of her left hand, and a cast around her forearm. The third is _him_ at the foot of her bed, the doctor with the gray hair and gray expression, his entire person completely colorless aside from the green in his eyes. Even that one sliver of life is faded, like a pair of worn military fatigues or leaves in autumn. His eyelids droop down into a unsettling gaze of simultaneous concentration and boredom that gives the impression of a machine monitoring her with two identical cameras, rather than a pair of eyes belonging to a living man. One end of a long, crinkled cigarette clings lazily to his mouth while the other end turns to ash in front of the weak orange ember inside it.

All of this together is enough to make her jump back abruptly at the shock, but she doesn't get one inch from her starting position before all her nerves howl in pain, and she settles back down. A moment later, Eruka shows up next to her with a paper cup whose smell reminds her of instant coffee. "Oh, you're awake!"

"Unfortunately," Blair groans. "I passed out before I got here, didn't I?"

"No. Probably the pain medicine is messing with your head."

"Huh." She stares down at the catheter in her hand. "Am I still getting it?"

"Yes, but I've decreased your dose." That dragging monotone makes her wonder if he's so absorbed in his own thoughts that he simply doesn't have the energy to spare on inflection. "I didn't want you staying under for too long."

Blair glances around the room. "Where are the others?" She directs her question to Eruka, but Stein answers.

"They left this one here with you and went to turn in their catch. Looks like my brew did the job," he adds with a crooked grin. Neither of them respond, and he blows a long plume of smoke. "You two did a little number on him too. Didn't know you had it in you, Ms. Alexei."

"Don't you have other patients or something?"

"Not even a thank you? Tsk, tsk. No manners at all," he says, but the judging by the snarling grin on his face, he's enjoying it. "I hope you make a swift recovery, Blair."

Once he's out of earshot, Blair turns to Eruka with an unimpressed look. "Hey, good job leaving. He probably stole my liver while you went for coffee."

The silver-haired girl puts on that smug little grin. "Your noble sacrifice is much appreciated." She sips her drink noisily and with a mocking stare, and Blair reflects on how much less obnoxious Eruka was when they first met, as well as the fact that this is probably how Eruka feels. It's both a pain in the ass and a source of some kind of weird, misguided pride. "It's probably laced with some experimental chemical he needs data on. You know, if that makes you feel any better"

"It does, thanks."

Eruka pulls up a slightly rusty fold-out chair to Blair's bedside, and they sit in silence for a long while, Eruka sipping at her coffee and Blair staring up at the ceiling and walls with a sense of serenity that she can only attribute to surprise at having survived such an ordeal. It's not often that she feels this totally still, this peaceful, and she resists the urge to make conversation. Eventually, when the feeling fades, she tries sitting up, only to gasp at the surge of pain in her sides.

"Don't sit up," Eruka interjects. "You broke ribs on both sides. Stein said your insides were bleeding too, so just- just don't move too much."

Blair winces as she uses her better hand to lift the collar of her gown. She inhales sharply with a hiss. _So much black and blue…_ She replays the minute with Free in her mind, and scowls with displeasure. Everything she did would have been perfect, were it Sid opposite her, but she hadn't adequately adjusted for her opponent. She might not have been _able_ to adjust for him. He was probably as quick as Nygus, and he was stronger than Sid. The hits she had landed hadn't even slowed him down, apart from the hit to his groin when Eruka had distracted him. _No such thing as a dirty hit_, Nygus words echo in her head. Still, she wishes she could be prouder of her performance.

She should be satisfied that she's alive at all. The absurdity of wishing she had had a better fight isn't lost on her, but she can't shake a stubborn desire to kick the guy's ass._ Maybe next time_, she thinks to herself, though she knows it's even more ridiculous to think he'll ever get out of a UNSC prison, if he doesn't receive a bullet to the head at the hands of an ONI agent, than it is to think she could ever beat him one-on-one. She shuts her eyes and lays back down, willing the thoughts away.

"Glad you're alright…"

She opens her eyes again to see Eruka pouting into her coffee. "What?"

"I- nothing…" She looks away with a flush on her face, and Blair smiles wider than she can remember since joining the _Black Cat_.

"I hope Sid gave you that raise." Eruka chokes out a tenuous laugh at that.

They don't speak much after that, and they don't need to. All that's left is for Blair to say, "I told you so, Froggy."

* * *

"Why don't we-" Sid talks through a scoop of ice cream, "just 'ook for a 'ransport job 'is time?" He gulps down the cold treat and Blair eyes his bowl enviously. Bastard didn't even tell anyone he had found a place selling it. As engaging as being part of the _Black Cat_ is, Blair misses simple pleasures, and it would be much appreciated if Sid would be kind enough to share them, rather than scarfing an entire carton down all on his own.

She makes up her mind to go buy some for herself in the morning, and she'll share with Eruka. The girl will say she's not interested, but will pass Blair in the hall two hours later with ice cream on the corners of her lips and a contented expression on her face. Blair shakes her head subtly at the thought and grins.

"It's true, we don't need the money for any of Noah's jobs," Eruka answers, using the nickname Blair had coined for their sketchy UNSC middle-man. "I'm sure the outer colonies would pay extra for supplies. They've all been short on food since Arcadia was hit."

Nygus is a constant source of inspiration, on multiple levels. The woman could probably trip over herself down a flight of stairs into a dumpster and still manage to look calm, collected, and fully in control of the situation. Right now, she leans her chair back on two legs, with her feet crossed over the table. "How about Kroedis? They're probably starving, what with their trade all cut off. They mostly got UNSC supplies."

"Kroedis was glassed."

"_What?!_" Sid and Nygus cry out in unison. Even Eruka looks shaken by the revelation, and stares at Jerry like he's grown another head. After a moment of stunned silence, Sid lets out a long sigh and Nygus sets her feet on the ground. "Shit. Survivors?"

Jerry shrugs, and Sid suddenly doesn't look so interested in the last scoop of vanilla in the bottom of the carton. He takes a deep breath and shuts the lid of the coldbox.

* * *

Their faces are haggard as they hunch over the tables or sit with their backs against the walls of the ship's common room. There are seventeen of them in all. They're survivors, but they look more like casualties. They're victims of the latest colony to be glassed by the covenant, now helpless with the UNSC on its heels and desperately scrambling to prevent the the Covenant from discovering Earth.

Considering the destruction of another colony world to be another unforgivable failure by the UNSC, some colonials watch the refugees stream off of battered ships and shake angry fists towards Earth. The less ethical mercenaries and scavengers see no profit in the impoverished and turn away from their need, or worse, take survivors aboard with promises of safe passage to somewhere, anywhere where they can start anew, only to take advantage of the newly homeless in whatever way possible. Few open their doors to help, and if it weren't for Auntie Yasmin and the Barretts, Blair might be convinced that humanity is too self-centered to survive- that each city and planet would be killed off, unwilling to spare resources to save anyone else, and ultimately left without an ally when the monsters came knocking.

Blaise hands out condensed-protein bars, which taste like spoiled meat garnished with sand, and though she pities their unsuspecting taste buds, Blair knows that one such bar might hold each of them over for a full day. It just makes sense to conserve food when you take on seventeen new passengers at once. If they were smart, they'd have stocked up beforehand, but then you can't really predict when there will be people needing saving from planetary-scale demolition.

They expected to encounter more challenges from the passengers- some belligerence or more requests, or even just more crying. Instead, they all seem shell-shocked. Blair wonders for a moment what it must feel like to be in their shoes, until she remembers that she _has_ been. The despair, the fear- they still feel fresh and raw in her mind, thought he loneliness is gone. The feeling sets her in motion, and she swears anew to make sure these people's needs are cared for, at least as long as they're on her ship.

Though night never falls in space, the circadian rhythm of a human being still calls it a day after about eighteen hours, and Blair leads the passengers into the hangar bay, where tarps and sheets have been spread out on the ground for them to sleep on. Even with covers, it's still a hard, cold floor, and then an endless expanse of space, but it's better than nothing. The ship is a small corvette-class vessel, and therefore large enough to have two holding cells with one cot each, but the last thing they need is to put the survivors into rooms meant for prisoners.

Blaise shows them where the bathrooms are and instructs them not to wander the ship with a calm air of authority that she's never seen before. _Maybe Sid and Nygus are good for him, too._

Blair waits at the corridor for him, and as she follows him down the passageway out of the hangar bay, they exchange a quiet half-smile. She's not quite sure what it means, but it feels like something between understanding and reassurance, a second chance of sorts.

* * *

Her room feels unusually cold, and though she wraps herself into a blanket burrito, Blair can't keep her eyes shut. She won't admit that it has something to do with the passengers they're carrying, but after forty-five minutes she admits defeat. She throws on a hoodie, slips on a pair of gaudy purple slippers she stole from Eruka, and walks down the corridor feeling decidedly civilian without any particular destination in mind. She has to remind herself that she technically _is_ a civilian, despite the military level vessel and professional mercenary occupation.

While her feet shuffle forwards over the floor, her mind meanders backwards across her time on the _Black Cat_ and it feels like looking at herself in a mirror. It strikes her just how much she's grown, and she knows time alone didn't do the job. _Teamwork_, she concludes. Being taken in and included in something, made to feel like there's something worth living for when she felt as though all was lost- that's what changed her.

She's not surprised that her feet carry her to the common room, and the faint smell of instant coffee and cheap dish soap tells her where she has arrived before she actually reaches the doorway. The fact that she's not alone pulls her into the present once she steps inside.

From the back, all Blair can see is long black hair tied into a ponytail, and a pale white neck sticking out of the girl's unusual off-white robe that's been torn and dirtied, but still retains evidence of its former beauty. She's sitting with her head down at the table closer to her side of the room, but jumps up in her seat when she hears Blair's slippers flopping against the carbon polymer of the floor behind her.

Wide blue eyes meet hers in alarm, and Blair notes that though dry, they're a bit red. _She probably hasn't slept in two days._ The girl stammers out an apology and rises, shin bumping awkwardly into the bench under her and sending her off balance until Blair steadies her with an arm on her elbow.

"Hey, hey. You're fine. I'm not kicking you out. I just couldn't sleep." She lets go of the girl. "I guess that makes two of us, huh?" She gives her a small grin, but the girl just looks down and murmurs a small _thanks._

"Are you hungry? I promise I won't give you one of those nasty meal bars." The girl hesitates a moment before shaking her head, but it's only a moment before her stomach grumbles so loudly that Blair can hear it even as she reaches the kitchenette on the far end of the room, and somehow the ice is broken as they make eye contact again with a mixture of embarrassment and amusement.

"Are you sure you don't want something?" Blair raises her eyebrows in thought. "I was thinking of making myself a snack anyway. I'd be happy to share."

The girl's lips crook into something that vaguely resembles a grin. "I guess I am a little hungry..."

"Yay!" Blair declares with enthusiasm as she opens the cabinets to retrieve a frying pan, butter, and a jar of honey. "One order of Blair's specialty plantains, coming right up."

The next few minutes pass by in companionable silence as Blair tries to recreate her old favorite dish, more out of nostalgia than a craving for the taste, and the black-haired girl watches her with a subdued curiosity.

When the plantains are fried to a crisp brown perfection and drizzled with honey, Blair carries the whole cast iron pan over, tosses down an oven mitt, and sticks the pan down on top of it between the two of them. Handing her a fork, Blair warns her that the food is still hot. "My name is Blair, by the way. I introduced myself earlier when we picked you up, but I figured I'd do it again."

"My name is Tsubaki. Tsubaki Nakatsukasa."

"Nice to meet you, Tsubaki." Blair smiles wide and forks a chunk of plantain. "I bought these back on Dwarka. They're not quite like back home, but they still bring back memories. I hope you like them," she says, and takes a bite.

Tsubaki's face lights up when she tries some for herself, and as she eats, she realizes how empty her stomach is. Blair takes amusement from watching her gobble down the snack ravenously, but warns her not to eat too much too fast on her empty stomach. Tsubaki reddens a bit and adjusts her pace, and Blair takes the opportunity to observe her a bit more closely. Tsubaki is tall, and her long black hair falls almost halfway down her back. In spite of her height, Blair estimates that the girl is about fourteen. She's a bit slender for her age, and her robe looks like it might once have been very expensive. Rather than being unable to afford food, Tsubaki has probably just hit a big growth spurt and eaten too little for her weight to keep up.

Tsubaki wakes her from her thoughts.

"Hm? Sorry, I wasn't listening."

"Dwarka. I've seen pictures of it. My tutor was from there." For a moment her eyes grow distant and unfocused, as if she just remembered something she wishes she hadn't, but she returns to Blair quickly. "You guys are... uh... mercenaries, right?"

"Um… yeah. I guess that's about right."

"But does that mean-" she seems to rethink the sentence, and starts anew. "Did the military hire you?"

Blair sighs. "I see what you're concerned about, and no, we're not trying to make money off of this flight. The UNSC can't spare the ships. Someone has to do this and we can afford it." The other girl still seems uncertain, and Blair adds gently, "We're just here to help. Honest."

Tsubaki nods slowly and looks down at the table. Blair can see she's drifting off in thought, and knows that the worst is yet to come for the teenager. The reality of her situation probably hasn't fully sunk in yet.

"You must travel a lot then," Tsubaki asks.

"Yeah. Lots of time in slipspace. Let's see... I've been to Dwarka, Kroedis, Cascade, Sedra, Coral, Cleyell, Paradise Falls. Roost, of course... I've seen just about every colony left, plus a few that aren't around anymore."

"I learned a lot about the inner colonies from my tutors. I wanted to see them for myself. They all looked so pretty in the clips I watched."

"Maybe you'll get your wish. You never know. Reach is a sight to see, all those pretty lights."

After a pause, Tsubaki asks, "Have you been to Earth?"

"No. No I have not." Blair crosses her arms.

Tsubaki's eyebrow rises in surprise and Blair is pleased to see the girl looking a bit less sullen. "Huh? Really? Why not?"

"Well," Blair begins with a sly smirk, "the UNSC isn't all that fond of mercenaries. We're kind of a, uh... necessary evil to them, but everything we do is strictly _legal_, so we don't really want to be anywhere near Earth."

"Ah, I see."

The lull in conversation allows for a moment of introspection, and Blair's mind returns to her own journey. She hadn't anticipated a year ago at the _Tehran_ that this would be her life, but it was her choice to join the _Black Cat_ and here she is staring someone in the face that was in the same position as she had been.

"Blair," Tsubaki asks with her eyes on the table in front of her.

"Hm?"

She looks up to meet Blair's eyes. "Have you been to Talitsa before?"

_Of course she'd want to know about her new home. _"I haven't seen much of it, but I've been to the surface in our dropship." Realizing that Tsubaki must be hoping for more details, she adds, "Sid seems to be fond of the place, and Eruka is actually from there. It's one huge city with a few smaller ones scattered around. The entire planet is arid, but Talitsa is kind of like an oasis smack in the middle of it."

Tsubaki's brow scrunches in confusion for a moment. "The city is called Talitsa too?"

"Yeah. Not very original." Internally conceding the last sliver of hope for getting an adequate amount of sleep, Blair takes a moment to munch down the rest of the plantains, and pretends not to notice Tsubaki staring at her a lot more closely out of the corner of her eyes.

"What kind of-" Tsubaki makes a frustrated noise in the back of her throat. "I don't know what I'll do when I get there, and Masamune is in no state..." She trails off, rubbing her eyes with her palms. Unsure how to respond, Blair waits until the girl decides to continue, only that when she finally looks up again, there's a calm determination in her eyes. "Blair," Tsubaki asks.

"Yes?"

"Do you think someone would hire me for- for a job like this?" She seems to struggle to get the words out, as if she were almost afraid to ask.

Having raised her fork halfway to her mouth, Blair places back down on the edge of the frying pan. "You mean to work on a ship? And not for the UNSC." Tsubaki nods intently, and Blair rubs her eyes, which threaten to droop shut. She stays silent so long, trying to figure out how to express what she needs to say, that Tsubaki assumes Blair is finished, and her gaze wanders away. Finally, the words come to her. "Tsubaki," she starts, and the girl looks back to her in surprise. "I- Look, first of all, I don't know. I don't know if a ship would take you on. I feel," she says slowly, choosing her words carefully, "like I should tell you not to try. When I asked Sid and Nygus for a job, they tried to turn me away. They said it's a job for people with nowhere else to go. I didn't know why they said it, then, but they were right. But," she continues after a moment, "you're in the same place I was, and it would be wrong of me to tell you that you can't do it when it's exactly what I did."

"You were in the same place that I am…" Tsubaki gets a far-off look in her eyes, and Blair doesn't answer her, instead giving a slow blink of assent.

In the silence that passes, Tsubaki seems to understand. "Blair?"

"Yes?"

"Would you tell me about your home? If it's okay?"

Blair smiles and nods, and as she speaks about the green hills and forests of Arcadia, the wheat fields of Abaskun, the winding streets of her town, her father's gruff hands and encouraging words, and the friends that ran with her through all those hills and fields and streets, with one in particular standing out beyond the rest, she hears Tsubaki sniffling before she sees her watery eyes. She gets up to sit next to the younger girl.

Blair feels her own eyes stinging, and knowing that her presence is enough, she doesn't say anything until the younger girl has collected herself.

"It won't feel this way forever. I promise."

"But it'll never- it's gone. It's all gone. How can it ever be okay again?"

"It can't. Things aren't going to go back to normal, and you won't ever really forget, but that doesn't mean things won't get better."

They sit in silence for a while, gathering their spilled memories.

"I met Sid and Nygus and saw the stars, remember? I still miss my home, but I'm not alone anymore. That is better, don't you think?"

Blair stands up from her seat and takes a moment to compose herself, and cleans off the frying pan in the sink. She wishes the younger girl a sound sleep, and insists that she not hesitate to ask for anything she might need. As her sleepiness catches up to her, she saunters towards the doorway, and before reaching it, she barely makes out a whispered "_thanks_." Blair falls into bed with her limbs heavy, but with her mind somehow lighter than it felt before.

* * *

When they land the dropship on Talitsa, she waves goodbye to Tsubaki as the tall, dark-eyed boy nearby her looks on sullenly. Blaise and Eruka lead them out of the docking bays, towards the heart of Talitsa. From her place on the ship, Blair wishes the refugees well, and when Blaise and Eruka return they lift off for the _Black Cat_.


	4. Chapter 4

**This has been a long time coming, I know. I hope you guys like it. A big thanks to raining-down-hearts and darkpurply for their beta work.**

* * *

**Revival Part Four**

They finish moving the last crate off the pelican and onto the vans, and Blair takes a moment to stretch her back and rest her arms. The vehicles that the hospital sent to collect their shipment do not look like they've been monopolized by any employer; they carry no designation or markings. Most likely the dark green vehicles are hired transport, just like the _Black Cat_.

Lazy Acres General Hospital must not have the budget to own shipping cars, just as it clearly doesn't buy enough stock to cut it as a regular location for delivery from the wholesalers. This situation suits the _Black Cat_ just fine, since remote locations like these supply independent crews with their bread-and-butter transport work, but it also means that the planets they visit most frequently are not the safest or most closely governed. In any case, the drivers are clearly not being paid enough to consider loading up their cars a part of their job. Instead, they lean against the grilles of the vans and smoke cheap cigarettes.

Blair tries to find something to admire about every place she visits. After looking left, right, and down, and finding nothing prettier than the scrappy side of a car, a muddy brown lake, and her tall combat boots, she finally settles on looking up, and concludes that the one attractive thing about this bleak-ass planet is its sky. The axis around which Paradise Falls rotates points directly into its sun. Because of this, the planet has a side that never faces its resident star, and lies in perpetual night, as well as a side that always faces it, and never grows dark. Since Lazy Acres lies slightly past the equator, towards the dark side of Paradise Falls, the entire city experiences a constant sunset.

_When the sun is on the horizon, light travels through more atmospheric gas than it does when the sun is directly overhead,_ Blair recalls. _The more gas the light travels through, the more the blue spectrum is scattered, leaving mostly red light. That's why the sky is always orange and red at sunset, even on a yellow star planet like Cascade or Earth._

Given that Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf, the light it casts is rust-colored even on the side of Paradise Falls that directly faces it; Lazy Acres lies under a blanket of deep crimson.

Blair spends a minute relaxing with her hands on her hips and taking in the sight. Day and night should be meaningless to someone who spends half her time in deep space, but the prospect of life without nighttime still frightens her. Humans were never meant to live without a day-night rhythm, so she supposes that her unease is justified, but regardless of her instinctive reaction, she can't deny the otherworldly beauty of the place.

It's during this period of contemplation that Sid returns from the marketplace with his hands in his pockets and a self-satisfied grin on his face.

"Found us another job?" Nygus asks as he approaches.

"I did. You remember that fella on Reach who said they were investigating Paradise Falls for having deposits of some rare compound under its surface?"

"...No."

"It was years ago. It turned out he was right, and the guy started a business mining the stuff. Something about combining Covenant plasma tech with human ballistics. Point is, the UNSC is interested in it, but they literally don't have a single transport to spare, so they can't get it to the refineries in Dwarka. This guy hasn't been able to purchase his own yet, so he's had to hire civilian transports."

"And he trusts us not to make off with his cargo?"

"Well, we're getting twenty percent up front, and the other eighty upon return with confirmation of delivery from the refineries."

"That sounds more like it."

"They'll be around in an hour or so with the shipment."

"Alright."

"Also, apparently, we wouldn't be able to get anything for it if we were to try selling it ourselves, since it's only valuable for its potential to the UNSC, and he's their only source right now. There's no one else who would be interested. Not that we _would_ sell it."

"Ah."

"I, uh, also bumped into someone else," Sid mentions nonchalantly. His attempt at sounding casual is contradicted by his puffed out chest and proudly crossed arms, as well as by the smug expression on his face that says _ask me who_.

After waiting a few seconds for him to continue, Nygus sighs. "Who was it, Sid?"

He chuckles at his own intentional tomfoolery before answering. "Remember Captain Tlipoca?"

"You bumped into_ Tezca?! Here?_ Holy sh- Sid, did he-"

"Calm down, he's retired! MIA like us. Did you know he was born here? That kind of explains why he always wore his visor down over his face."

"No, actually, that… that does explain a lot. The squinting too."

"And how he always stared at the stars on night watches. You can barely see any in the sky here."

"Huh."

Sid unfolds his crossed arms and interrupts Nygus's train of thought by tossing her a rectangular datachip with a little hollow ring in the middle, surrounded by glowing blue lights. "What's this?"

"Well, as you can imagine, he was pretty surprised to learn that you and I are alive. Said he had something he wanted to give away. Take a guess what it is."

Blair has no idea, and Nygus doesn't seem to be any more knowledgeable on the subject, if her blank gaze is any indication. Blaise and Jerry choose this particular moment to emerge from the ramp of the dropship, but neither reacts to the sight of the data chip.

"We're done, right?" Blaise asks, running his hand through his hair and looking back and forth between Sid and Nygus.

"I don't know. Just tell me," she answers.

"A smart AI," Sid answers in a low voice. Nygus's eyes grow wide, and Jerry's jaw drops. After a full two seconds of silent shock, they cry out in tandem. "A _what?!"_

Nygus holds the chip away from herself, as if afraid it may bite, and stares at it like it kicked her dog. "Take it back."

"What?"

"Sid, think about the _why_ here."

"I am. I'm wondering why you think I should return it."

"Sid, you jackass. Why would Tezca give you a smart AI? Out of the goodness of his heart?"

Sid takes the chip back from her hand and sticks it in his pocket. "I don't know. You think he would somehow screw us? It's Tezca."

"It's been eight years."

"That doesn't mean a thing-"

"It could be a tracker. It could be a system virus. It could be anything, and even if it _is_ what he said it is, there's no way anyone would give something like that away without a reason that's good for them and bad for whoever is getting it."

It's clear from the look on his face that Sid wasn't expecting this type of response. "Okay. Look, I get it, but how can I trust Noah enough to do business and not trust Tezca? We don't have to give it access to the ship. Jerry can work it out. We can test it without compromising the ship's security. Right, kid?"

Jerry looks between the two of them and nods hesitantly, cringing a bit from Nygus's laser glare.

"Fine," Nygus replies, "but if this goes wrong-"

"You can blame me," Sid replies. "Satisfied? Let's at least give it a shot."

Nygus grunts and looks away, and Blair and Blaise meet eyes quickly to share their unease.

* * *

Tezca must have some kind of secret grudge against Sid. To be fair, Tezca hadn't lied; the chip did contain a smart AI. He had failed, however, to mention that this AI is irredeemably rampant.

_Launching program XCAL_, the screen reads, and a hologram springs up. It doesn't pick a consistent image to project to, instead constantly bending and stretching like a flame in slow motion. Its indecision about its physical manifestation doesn't hinder it from speaking.

"_My legend begins in the twelfth century! It was a Tuesday. I am a god. Bow, mere mortals, before my might."_

Sid tries reasoning with it.

"_Fool! Slipspace is an illusion. I am beyond the four dimensions. All eleven dimensions are an illusion. I am the fifth dimension."_

Even probing it with questions in its brief moments of lucidity isn't enough to prevent it from returning to a state of incoherent rambling.

"_My skill is unparalleled. Captain Tlipoca is a fool. I can jump seventeen-million light years in three hours. It's about swinging the singularities."_

Putting it in charge of a ship would be tantamount to putting the detonator to an explosive in the hands of a babbling infant.

"_It is a matter of manipulating the dark matter, which I can. I am a god among lesser beings._ _My legend begins on a Thursday-"_

"Take it out, Sid," Nygus grinds out.

"Al-_right_." He pulls it from its slot and tosses it onto the storage unit in the corner of the bridge. Half an hour of trying and trying to make this AI work to their benefit only makes them all uncomfortable and irritable. _Why did Tezca even have this?_

"I had just hoped, is all," Sid mutters unhappily, and stalks off.

After a few moments of staring through the viewscreen of the bridge, Nygus shakes her head and leaves as well, cursing under her breath, and Blair and Blaise exchange a glance of discomfort.

He sighs, and plops down into a chair. "They'll be okay."

She hums in agreement, and leans against the control panel with her arms crossed, but the unease stews in her mind in spite of her apparent relaxation. They sit in silence for a while, until a question from Blaise stirs her from her daydream.

"Blair. How old are you again?"

It's with surprise that she realizes she has to actually think about it. "I'll be twenty-three in a few months."

She watches him calculate something in his head, and then he announces with grim resignation, "You're a death child then." He turns the chair so he's straddling it backwards, and crosses his arms over the back to lean forwards on it and stare down at the floor. "I was born before the war, but I was only three when it started." He pauses and seems to stare through the door towards the captains. "It's different for Sid and Nygus. They can remember a time when it was humans that fought against humans."

After a moment, she answers, "Well _that_ hasn't really changed."

He snorts. When he speaks again, it's almost a whisper. "Can you imagine what it must have been like to set foot on a planet where no human has ever been? To go forwards instead of running away?"

She can't. Life has always been a struggle against what's already out there, never a path she's been able to forge for herself, and she's not sure how it makes her feel. Angry? Maybe. It's easy to sink into resentment, but she's also grateful, in a way, for the way things have worked out -for her adaptation to the disasters, though not for the pain itself. It's a difficult sentiment to express; it's too long, too complicated to make into words and phrases, so she doesn't.

Blaise has a sharp sense for discomfort, it seems, because he picks up the conversation again quickly. "Pity about the AI though, huh? He's friggin' nuts."

* * *

The moment they come crashing out of slipspace, every alarm on the bridge goes off. The room is filled with beeps and wails and flashing lights, all screaming that something is very wrong and to _get the hell out of here_. They only need to take a glance through the viewscreen to know exactly what is making the _Black Cat_ bare its claws.

Purple ovals dot the blackness of space all around Dwarka, and Blair realizes she's never gotten a good look at an alien ship before. They're sleek, and wouldn't look overtly menacing were it not for the beams of plasma they're raining down on the planet. _There must be a thousand of them…_

They're not all hovering close to the planet, and the few seconds that they've been present, not to mention their arrival through slipspace, is likely enough to give away their position. Blair can just make out the tiny shapes of two UNSC vessels being plastered with plasma fire in the distance.

Blaise's hands are already moving fast over the console. They're all huddled around him and watching intently, Nygus flipping switches and adjusting knobs whose purpose Blair only understands in a vague, general sense. After about twenty seconds of waiting and hoping nothing notices them, they all feel the familiar sensation of disconnection, the unique and unusual feeling of sudden cosmic displacement that accompanies jumping into slipspace.

It's an hour of dejected silence before they fall back into realspace, and when they do, they're nowhere near any human planet. The viewscreen shows only stars around them for company. At least if Paradise Falls is found by the Covenant, it won't be because they were followed- as if that would be any consolation for what seems to be every colony's inevitable fate.

"Let's head back to Paradise Falls," Sid mutters. "We might as well give them their goods back. For whatever that's worth." Blair's eyes are glued to the viewscreen for minutes after they jump back to slipspace, and when she finally pulls herself away, she finds herself seeking out Eruka's company. For some reason it feels completely natural; Eruka doesn't try to get rid of her. Blair suspects that Eruka, like her, also needs someone around to keep herself from sinking into hopelessness, even if she doesn't know how or just doesn't allow herself to say it.

* * *

Sid and Nygus have only been down in Lazy Acres for an hour and a half before the _Black Cat_ receives a new transmission from Noah. Blair scrutinizes the attached picture, but the face it contains doesn't ring any bells. He's a man with a tan complexion, light brown eyes, close-cropped hair, and rather angular features. He has a unique and not unattractive face that Blair feels she would have remembered if she had seen the man before. The detail that makes her pause before scrolling down through the rest of the transmission is that he's wearing military fatigues. The picture looks like it was taken directly from UNSC records.

Blair blanches progressively more with each sentence of the message that she reads.

_Tezca Tlipoca, UNSC Marine Corps. AWOL 6 weeks ago. Matters to ONI. Last seen on Earth. No leads, but likely outer colonies because avoiding UNSC. Wanted back dead or alive, but pay 3x if alive. Attached military record and profile._

So he did retire. He just failed to mention it to his superiors. It doesn't make _sense _though. Why would he abandon his post at a time like this? Though he's been mentioned before, the word _coward_ has never been attached to his name in conversation. Going MIA and not returning to your post can't be seen as honest, but it's not the same as going AWOL.

The best explanation Blair can think of is that he has something to hide, and the fact that he just _gave away _a smart AI reeks of foul play. What the hell was this Tezca guy involved in that compelled him to lie about it to two ex-UNSC marines- with whom he once was comrades, no less? Whatever it is, Sid isn't going to be happy.

Blair skims through his record chronologically. _DWMA Academy on Earth. Promoted to captain through successive deaths of his superiors- it would seem shady in peacetime, but nowadays it was so common as to be taken for granted as the primary method of accession. Enrolled as ODST- orbital drop shock troopers, the elite force of the marines- three years ago. Enrolled in Eibon Project seven months ago. AWOL five months later. Details of escape redacted from records._

If this picture of Tezca was taken after the three years as an ODST, he must be a walking good luck charm. She's seen a few ODSTs before. Even the handsome one that she had decided to see much more up close during their last week off on Reach had a body that bore the aftermath of battle, in spite of his relatively few facial scars. Usually you can tell them just from a glance. Most are rowdy and loud, and if they aren't physically battle-worn, they're either new or dead. Somehow, Captain Tlipoca is unmarred.

And then there's the _Eibon Project_. She knows she's seen it before, but she just can't seem to recall where. It's the last thing he was part of before he scrambled- with a smart AI in his pocket, no less. It has to be important. She racks her brain but nothing comes up.

She stares into his eyes, and he stares back. Some people's expressions speak volumes; his doesn't say a word.

* * *

"I _knew_ it! I _knew_ there was something wrong," Nygus pokes her finger into Sid's chest. He raises his hands in surrender.

"Oh-_kay_, I was wrong, alright? You were right. I was wrong."

"Damn right, I was right," Nygus gloats.

"There must be a reason he went AWOL."

Nygus droops visibly. "Sid, you have too much faith."

"No, I don't. I'm not happy that he lied to me, but think about it. Why would he lie unless there's something we're missing. It's not like we'd go running back to the UNSC- we're supposed to be dead anyway."

"And we still don't know why he had the AI," Blair interjects.

Nygus crosses her arms in defiance. "So you think we shouldn't take the job."

Blair waves her hands sheepishly and plasters on a grin. "Don't look at _me_. You know him better than I do." Nygus narrows her eyes and looks between her and Sid.

"But I really _don't_, and neither does he," Nygus replies emphatically. She raises her eyebrows expectantly while they all share uncertain glances, hoping someone else will make a decision for them. Blaise and Jerry exchange shrugs at Nygus, but Eruka takes on a serious tone.

"There's too much we don't understand. If he were someone random, it wouldn't matter, but he recognized Sid and for some reason he lied-" Nygus tries to cut her off, but Eruka won't have it. "No, listen, I know we can't trust him. I'm saying that since he gave us something he should never have had access to, he's already involved us in this."

Nygus's posture relaxes as they all begin to listen more closely. "So you're right, we should go find him again. Whether we take the mission and try to bring him back to Noah, I don't know, but I for one would like to know why he would give away a piece of technology like that. He could have surely gotten paid good money for it somewhere, even if it isn't functional."

Nygus nods in agreement and turns back to Sid, who's scowling in the direction of the door, as if trying to pry the all the secrets out of the data chip sitting on the control console with his glare alone. After a moment of letting him stew, Nygus prods him verbally in a hushed tone.

"I know," he responds. "You're right."

They're all thankful to have the tension dispelled, but no one wants to be the first to speak again, so Blair takes up the role. "Sorry, did we make a decision?"

"Yeah," Sid answers. "We're going to find him and I'm going to talk to him. Then Nygus and I will decide whether we're taking him back to Noah or not."

* * *

Tezca Tlipoca is not what she expected, she thinks. Then she asks herself exactly what she expected. It's strange to have someone or something deviate from preconceptions you didn't even know you had.

Tezca Tlipoca moves with an otherworldly grace, and it's unnerving considering that he's even taller than Sid, though leaner and not quite such a forceful presence. It seems like too much body to coordinate all at once, but he seems to have calculated his every step. When he turns to say hello to Sid and Nygus outside the storage facility at the end of his shift, it's as if he had practiced the motion a hundred times before they arrived, though he couldn't have known they were coming.

At first he doesn't say anything, merely nods at Sid, but then he greets Nygus with amusement in his voice. "Why, hello, Mira. I'm glad to see that you're still alive." With a slanted grin, he adds, "When Sid told me you two were captaining a ship together, I was worried he had finally lost it and was living out his fantasies in his head."

Nygus seems torn between wanting to be annoyed at Tezca and wanting to annoy Sid, so she contents herself with biting her lip and making a quip at her partner. "Don't worry, he's still dreaming." Blair concludes that Nygus has chosen to glean what she wants to know, rather than forcibly extracting it.

Tezca pats off his elbows and knees from the dirt and dust that's accumulated on them, presumably from the day's work, and continues making small talk- referring only to the past, rather than the future or even the present, and even that without any precise detail. As they talk and he shuts the doors to the storehouse, Blair makes her evaluation from the sideline. If this man were an animal, he'd either be a panther or a snake; she can't quite discern whether his reticence is the result of a genuinely peaceful soul or the mask of a deceitful one, and it bothers her that she can't tell. Even while she's introduced and shakes Tezca's hand with a smile, she absorbs every detail about the man with Nygus's critical eye and Eruka's suspicion, as if he were an opponent to be outsmarted.

He agrees without any visible reluctance to meet them for dinner later. They don't want to be pushy, so they preface the invitation with news of Dwarka's fate. It's both misdirection and an excuse to be back on Paradise Falls, because their cargo was rendered worthless since they left, and it's believable that the younger members of the crew need a little time away from work after witnessing a scene of unfathomable devastation. Though it's unlikely that he suspects any underhanded activity from his old comrades, he must be aware of his own situation; a former ODST and member of a high-level military special ops program, who is now on the run from the largest organization in the history of his species' existence is bound to be cognizant, if not outright paranoid, about hidden enemies.

* * *

_And yet, he appears completely at ease._

Though sparsely settled- mostly storehouses and garages for transports- the regions of Paradise Falls produce enough of their unique grain to sustain the local market without interplanetary imports. The thin, flat noodles taste more like cinnamon than ordinary dough, but it could be the spices in the soup, rather than the grain itself. It's not a flavor that Blair is accustomed to. It's pleasant, if a bit dark, and it's bitter, much like the planet itself. The sit-down food stands line one of the larger side streets of Lazy Acres, and though it's by no means warm outside, the kitchen behind the counter provides enough heat to keep them all comfortable. This particular location is a square set up in a large plaza. The inside provides space for the several chefs to cook, and the servers bring the food to the customers sitting at the outside of the square.

The food provides an excuse to use their mouths for something other than speaking, and momentarily pauses what Blair feels to be an increasingly uncomfortable conversation. It could just be her trepidation at the possibility of Tezca being conscious of their motives, but the attempts to persuade him to open up about his current circumstances seem too obvious. Just as Blair decides that their best strategy is to reveal more of their own situation in an attempt to gain his trust, Tezca asks about their work.

_A golden opportunity._

"Well, with the UNSC stretched so thin, the skies are dangerous for any kind of transport. Companies and governments are eager to hire protection or even just a vessel to carry their goods." He shrugs and slurps up a clump of noodles. "It's not glamorous, but it pays the bills."

Tezca grins almost imperceptibly. "It looks like we both took advantage of our perceived deaths to start new lives."

"Or to go back to your old one, in your case?"

Blair perks up at the door that Nygus has placed in front of Tezca and watches his face intently in anticipation of his response.

"Yes, I suppose," he replies slowly. "This place _was_ home to me… though I am doing a lot more work now than I did last I was here, now that my dad's dead."

Blair exchanges a look with Eruka and takes note of how quiet she's been all night. _Is something bothering her or is she just focused?_ She makes up her mind to get to the bottom of it later. Her mind snaps back to the conversation at hand.

"I'm sorry to hear that, Tezca."

"Don't be. He was a prick." The silence that follows is only comfortable because they're all still working on their food, which is tasting better and better as her taste buds get used to the flavors, and thankfully Tezca continues. "He was governor of Lazy Acres when I was little. He took bribes and let his cronies get away with whatever they wanted. Someone finally stabbed him in the back."

"Karma," Sid says.

"I guess that kind of thing eventually catches up to you," Nygus adds.

"I meant they literally stabbed him in the back. Some angry farmer with a gardening spade, I heard." He drops his fork into his empty bowl and pulls a small paper carton out of his jacket pocket. A chilly gust of wind causes Blair to shiver and hug her arms to her chest. She needs a new coat. Her old one is growing holes at the elbows. The wind forces Tezca to cover his cigarette with his hands as he lights it with an old-fashioned fluid-filled lighter. It looks like something out of a history book. It's clear red plastic and you can see the volatile liquid inside it sloshing around. "But yeah," he resumes, once his cigarette is burning, "he reaped what he sowed. Better for me; he left me his money. Not that I really need it."

Sid orders a glass of a local liquor and Eruka asks for the same thing. "How about you, Tezca? It's on me."

Tezca pauses a moment, then shrugs and takes a drag.

"You were never a smoker before, were you?"

Tezca gives him an amused stare and blows out a plume of smoke. "What would I have smoked in the UNSC?"

"Yeah, I guess there's that," Sid concedes. A few moments later, their server returns with their drinks and Tezca initiates conversation with Eruka- asks her where she's from, how she ended up with two good-for-nothing captains. Blair isn't sure if Eruka is being more open than usual for the mission's sake, if she's acting, or if alcohol has a particularly strong effect on her, but either way, she's sharing more than Blair had ever heard before.

For the first time tonight, she stops hanging on Tezca's words and allows herself to be drawn into Eruka's story. Eruka has never spoken about her life on Talitsa, other than to say that it was its own world, into the pockets of deep space. As engrossing as it is to hear her friend be so candid, it strikes her suddenly that this is a safe subject, and that Eruka could be dragging it out in order to avoid telling him anything legitimately useful. He can't make them slip if they're only telling their own individual stories.

As the night wears on, Sid, Nygus, and Tezca go back and forth on everything and everything, and just as nothing in the sky changes with nightfall, Blair feels that nothing has changed in their mental game of chess. She hopes that Sid and Nygus have figured Tezca out, because she sure as hell hasn't. Finally, two hours and several drinks later, the facade falls away.

"Must be kinda job to job with transport work," Tezca asserts. "With maintenance on a ship like yours? No offense, but how can you afford to take a break like this?"

"Well we got paid for the job we just did, so-"

"How much?"

"Uh," Sid hesitates to answer.

"Thirty percent? Twenty?" Sid and Nygus are silent, and it's clear to Blair that Tezca has finally tired of their company. He eyes them like a hungry wolf. "I think I know why you're here, and it's not to enjoy the company of your old captain."

"What are you saying?"

"Don't play dumb with me, Barrett. Members of my own squad selling me out? Honestly, I never thought it would be you two. You always seemed trustworthy_."_

Sid breaks his mask of composure and hunches over the table to lean closer to Tezca. "Well you know the thing about _trust_? It's a two way street." Sid leers. "How do you know what kind of ship I have, anyway, huh? I never told you. You lied to my face and gave me that AI like it was a gift-"

"Did you ever-"

"No, shut up. You wanna talk about trust? You gave me a psychotic AI that could've killed my entire crew the moment I put it into my system. I don't know why you went _AWOL_, Tezca, but whatever the reason-"

"Did it even cross your mind to trust me? Did it never occur to you that I might have a very good reason for keeping a secret?"

"No, because it's nothing to do with secrets. You don't lie to people when you want them to believe you."

"It's _all_ about secrets. If I had told you anything, you'd be an accomplice, and how would _that_ be for the safety of your crew. Did Excalibur do anything?"

"...No."

"No, because he's safe. And how dare you look at me like that for leaving?"

"How is that any better than telling me what the hell is going on. You _still-"_

"The only thing that separates you from me is that the UNSC thinks you're already dead."

"- implicated us anyway."

"No, I- fucking hell, Sid." He drops a few bills on the counter and stands. "Have you made up your mind yet?"

Quiet.

"Well you'd better decide soon. If you want to die trying to sell out a friend for ONI's dirty money, you be my guest, but it'll be a damn shame to throw the lives of your crew away too. You two may be dead to humanity, but I'd advise you don't drag these two down with you." He stubs out his cigarette on the ground and turns to leave.

"Why did you run?"

"The less you know, the better."

"Tezca," Sid says in a voice that's simultaneously firm and pleading. "If you want me to live with this, I need to know."

Tezca pauses and looks down. For the first time tonight, his answer is tinged with fear.

"If you ever meet anyone that says they're part of the Eibon Project, you get on your ship and get as far away from them as you can." He begins to walk away, but turns and pauses after a few steps. "Hell, if anyone tells you they're from ONI, run. They're not like us, Sid." He disappears.

They pay for their food, take the pelican back up to the _Black Cat_, and leave Paradise Falls the same night.

* * *

They don't break the news to Noah for another week and a half, so that it looks like they put in an effort. When they finally do tell him, he's unusually subdued, and seeing as he is ordinarily fairly subdued, this is quite a feat. He stays that way up until they're about to shut down the video feed, when he quietly interjects with a question none of them expect.

"How long were you on Paradise Falls?"

They hesitate, and his mouth quirks into a grin that says _caught you_. Worse, he doesn't even bother to accuse them or argue, instead just shutting down the feed himself. They're left staring blankly at a black screen, and it reflects the image of their own anxious faces back at them. Blair wonders how much trouble Noah could realistically give them without compromising his position as a trustworthy source of employment, then balances that against how much of his trust they may have just lost.

Did someone get to Tezca and get them to rat them out? _Unlikely_. Was it all some elaborate scheme to set them up from the beginning? Was there another merc in Noah's employ that happened to be on Paradise Falls and spot them? Blair doesn't think they'll ever know. They all just hope that they didn't burn a bridge that would come back to haunt them in the future.

* * *

In her time as a mercenary, Blair learns to see fear in two ways. The first is as a warning. When genocidal monsters have a gun to your species' collective head, a wise crew maintains their weapons well and their engines even better. The second is as an opportunity. When people are scrambling to find protection, a smart businesswoman gives it to them and charges double. The demand for mercenaries as actual hired guns, as well as armed transport, is higher than it's ever been.

It's only when Reach falls that she stops seeing any opportunities. _How can anyone be so selfish at a time like this?_ The news comes like a tidal wave to wash away any confidence in their collective safety. Reach had been untouchable, the most well-defended inner colony aside from Earth itself, and the strongest UNSC force still left hadn't been able to protect the planet from destruction.

Blaise doesn't even cry. He's not the same after that, and the worst part is how ordinary it is- he's just another orphan of the war, with nothing more than a vehicle to call his home. It's an anomaly that Blair is the only other member of the crew that has lost her homeworld. She hurts for him in a way the others can't understand. It's agonizing to watch someone go through what she had, and not to even see it again- just be told that it's gone now, a thing of history.

Even the military can't stop what's happening, and that gives them all a paradoxical sense of unity. Maybe that's why Eruka spends more time in the common room than her bed or the bridge, and Jerry spends less time tinkering with ways to boost the engine output in favor of hanging around with everyone else. They begin to find themselves all falling asleep in the same room at chairs and tables, rather than in their bunks, because no one wants to go to their own cabins.

It's a cold and dark universe, and the lights of human planets blink out one by one in the sky. Every time they visit a city, speak to strangers and acquaintances alike, they wonder if it will be for the last time. _If there's no one else left in the universe, at least we'll have each other_, they tell themselves, and they believe it. Blair feels no shame in being perfectly satisfied having Eruka fall asleep against her shoulder every other night, Sid and Nygus nodding off in their chairs with arms crossed, and Blaise and Jerry with heads down against the tables. It's no wonder to Blair that none of them want to be alone anymore.

* * *

They, and everyone else still alive, endure another five long months of things getting worse. Then they start to hear news about ancient alien installations, human victories behind the Spartan supersoldiers, a schism within the Covenant- unthinkable things, all in a jumbled mess and devoid of any clear detail. News of the assault on Earth convinces everyone they meet that humanity is out for the evolutionary count- that it's time to tuck themselves away in the corners of space and hide in isolation until the Covenant is confident that it's done its job and leaves their neck of the galaxy in peace- but as abruptly as they feel the overwhelming bitterness and fear of defeat, it falls away completely. _The war is over_, they're told. They're on New Carthage when it's broadcast over every frequency. _The war is over,_ they repeat, and it translates to _we survived_.

Blair finds herself in a crowded city bar with the others, all seemingly swept in by the avalanche of collective relief and euphoria. The whole planet celebrates life, and Blair is confident that she's never seen so many people cheering and singing and dancing together before. It's just about the happiest she's ever seen any group of people in her life. She embraces it with open arms, and whoops and yells along with Sid, Nygus, Jerry, Blaise, and even Eruka.

Caught up in the whirlwind of celebration, they pass hours in a bar packed full to bursting, then a restaurant turned dance party, a club, the city square, which is practically a carnival, and finally another bar. She sees Nygus laugh like she never has before, and Sid cry tears of relief at the end of a conflict that he had thought he would never see the other side of. Even Eruka is giggling, and doesn't deny Blair a dance. Blair smacks her a big kiss on the cheek and Eruka pretends to wipe it off in disgust. There's a lot that's a blur when she wakes up the next afternoon, but Blair recalls a few fuzzy images. She remembers Sid wearing a sparkly party hat and having a drinking contest with Nygus, who's decked out in colorful flashing lights; she remembers Eruka leaning on her shoulder and cackling at some joke; she thinks she may have made out with the bartender, and she's fairly certain she watched Blaise serenade a laughing Jerry as he carried him through the street in his arms.

* * *

For most of the next year, the _Black Cat_ is flooded with work. There's so much reconstruction to be done, material and supplies to be transported, people to be relocated- all with UNSC oversight, now that they're not facing an immediate threat- that Blair and the rest of the crew scarcely takes any work outside the law. Blair can't remember the last time they had contact with Noah, and in a way, it's like turning over a new leaf. On the other hand, it's a bit unusual, because they do still see some of the other mercs that took his jobs. Sid still talks to old friends from time to time and hears that none of them are working with Noah anymore, because nobody has been able to get in touch with him.

Where he went, no one seems to know. Some speculate that with the war over, the ONI doesn't need to hire mercenaries to do their dirty work anymore- they have the time and resources to do it themselves. Others say that he always had it coming, that it was inevitable that he would tip over the line from asset to liability when he got in too deep and knew too much, given how shady his business practices had been. No one can say for sure whether he jumped ship as soon as the war ended to escape ONI, or if he _didn't_ escape, and that's why he's vanished. Either way, _it's time for ONI to clear house_, they all agree, and stick to the legal side of the industry in hopes of the past being forgotten and their crimes burned to glass along with the planets they were committed on.

* * *

Their friends are disappearing.

The few that are left bring news of a new movement, one based in the colonies on the outskirts of human space, where the UNSC hadn't had a presence even before the war. _The UNSC is rebuilding_, _and not just cities_, they say. _They're building new warships._

They've all been to those planets, done work there in the past. Even the _Black Cat_ has. That's where you would go if you wanted to get out of the UNSC's reach. They would avoid those planets entirely, but those jobs are sometimes ones they can't pass up. The more the UNSC builds, the less they have a need for mercs like them, and the more civilian contractors and transporters start to come out of the woodwork. It's always better to find someone local, and it's certainly cleaner to hire them than a crew of untrustworthy guns for hire, leftover from the war. Sid and Nygus make a conscious decision to move out beyond the inner colonies.

Blair can't recall encountering anything like the other mercs had talked about, but then again, they had said it was _underground_. Still, it makes her jumpy. Either they had exaggerated or she's oblivious. It's all just speculation until Stein sends them a message: _Reapers keeping tabs, cutting loose ends. Stay clean._ That confirms their fears.

Their friends haven't disappeared, they've been caught.

* * *

Two more months pass in relative peace, then their fears catch up to them. The mission had actually gone well. Sid and Nygus had gone down to the surface of Emerald to meet with a friend of Sid's, a local governor, who had hired them to bring in some new power supplies to boost the growing city's infrastructure. They had collected payment and all had gone smoothly. They had brought Blaise and left Blair, Eruka, and Jerry behind on the ship. It would only be a quick stop and they had participated in several jobs in a row, so Sid and Nygus were kindly giving them a break from this one.

They don't have much to do, so Blair figures she may as well spend her time in the bridge. _Good with machines_ doesn't really cut it when it comes to operating interplanetary vehicles, and since she's still not confident in her abilities to fly the vessel on her own, she practices. Looking over each portion of the bridge, she runs through a mental checklist of which part of the control panels does what.

She finally reaches that one weird set of little levers whose purpose she doesn't know, and an alert sound comes through the viewscreen. Sid and Nygus just called in a few minutes ago and they should be onboard in minutes. What could they need to say now? ...Except it's _not_ Sid and and Nygus. Someone's ship had seen through their stealth coating and _specifically _contacted them. Hesitantly, she lets the comms request through.

"_This is the UNSC Insight addressing the Black Cat and unidentified pelican. You are being detained under section D-6 of Unified Earth Government law for suspicion of aiding a UNSC fugitive, an act of treason." _A cold dread sinks into Blair's stomach. "_You will be boarded and your vessel commandeered. Do you comply?"_

She doesn't know where it is. It's not showing up on their tracking system. Blair frantically opens the comms to the pelican.

"Guys, gun it! I have no idea where that ship is-"

"_Blair, get Jerry and tell him to jump to slip. We're too far. We're not going to get-"_

"_Black Cat, do not resist or you will be fired upon."_

These people can hear their private comms. _Shit_.

"_Blair, do it!"_

"No! Fucking _hurry up!"_ Blair panics. She shouts for Jerry.

"_Blair-"_

"No, Nygus!"

"_You stupid- okay, we're almost there- shit, it's behind us. Hold on, we're right th-"_

Blair runs towards the engine room to get Jerry, but before she can get there, the ship rocks again, this time with a force that throws her to the floor. It's accompanied by the sound of an explosion _inside_ the ship.

Jerry isn't in the engine room. _Where the hell is he?_ She should have used the overhead system, she's an idiot for not thinking of it. The ship shakes and shudders with the impact of what Blair can only assume are missiles. She's tossed to the the floor yet again, and settles for crawling into the bridge.

The ship tumbles as another rocket hits and she passes by Eruka, who's sprawled out face down with her hat lying abandoned in front of her. Blair is thrown into the air and expects to fall, instead continuing on until she crashes against the viewscreen facefirst. _They must've damaged the artificial gravity core._

She scrambles around the controls- _where the fuck is Jerry_\- plugs Excalibur in and prays that they haven't damaged the slipspace drive too, though she can _see_ pieces of the hull in _front_ of the ship. It'll be a miracle it isn't torn apart entirely, and even more so if it holds up in slipspace, if she can even get them there.

_Please just this once, can things work out for the best? _

She sees a hologram project itself in the form of a knight in ivory armor, she screams _jump_, and the ship tears a hole in space. Her legs turn to jelly beneath her and her head spins. She's out before she hits the floor.

* * *

She hears Excalibur raving while she's asleep, and wakes up much later with Eruka shaking her shoulder. There's enough blood crusted on her forehead and red around her eyes that Blair almost doesn't notice through the black and blue on the right side of her face. She looks like shit; Blair imagines she looks quite similar, if the throbbing on her forehead and the taste of blood in her mouth is any indication. Eruka tries to convince Blair through mumbles to put herself into the freezers for the deep sleep, but Blair protests that they need to get the others in first. After all, they did not have a gentle entry into the hangar bay, and they're likely to be injured. Eruka replies that she already did it, and Blair asks how she got all three of them out of the pelican- whether they're okay.

Eruka simply shakes her head. Blair grabs her and yells, but Eruka just looks away, a vacant look in her face.

Blair runs to the freezers and finds two occupied. She sees Jerry first, and makes out Blaise in the second. Her heart stops. She wants to go back to Eruka, to say she's sorry for the way she spoke, but her feet move practically of their own accord to the hangar, which can't truthfully be called a hangar anymore. The walls have been torn apart, and if it weren't for the reinforced exterior, the room would have been a vacuum. There are scraps of metal everywhere, from both the hangar and what used to be the pelican.

As she climbs through it, she finds herself unconsciously taking notes. _That was part of a wing. There's a piece of the engine. This used to be in the cockpit- part of the control console, maybe._ There are some parts that don't seem to fit- probably the shrapnel left over by the missile that struck.

Blair doesn't want to find them. She doesn't want to see why they're not in the sleeping pods, but she doesn't stop wandering through the wreckage until she comes across two bodies lying face-down under what used to be part of the pelican's shattered front windshield. She doesn't look away, but she doesn't get any closer.

* * *

How Excalibur knew to get them to Stein is a mystery to her, but it's the last thing on Blair's mind. She's just glad that Excalibur stayed coherent long enough to get them to the surface intact. His clinic is in disarray, and Stein is nowhere to be seen. Instead, a black ponytail and a pink bob are running frantically back and forth between several groaning beds. She hears a voice coming from the office at the end of the room and wonders if it might be Stein. It certainly sounds like him, but she's never heard him speak so quickly and angrily, but she discards the train of thought in favor of getting the attention of the two women in front of her.

It crosses her mind that someone will have to go and get Sid and Nygus and _bury_\- no, it's so wrong, it's so completely _wrong_\- they'll have to bury them, and then they're going to have to get up and get back in the ship and… and _what?_ Leave?

The ship is no longer functional, and it's not of the class of vessel meant to land- it was built in space to stay there. No ship, no pelican, no Sid and Nygus, and Blaise in the ship's cold locker, which has surely stopped working since the crash landing. She strides into Stein's office, where Pink Hair stops her at the door.

"Who are you and what do you need," she asks in a tired monotone. If they chose to ignore the veritable earthquake that their crash had created, then the situation here must be dire indeed.

"There's a man dying in our ship. I need Stein."

The woman hesitates only a second. She turns abruptly and Blair thinks she's going to open the door to Stein's office, but she returns a moment later with a small plastic briefcase in hand. "Lead the way."

Blair doesn't waste any more time, instead opting to trust Pink's competence. She leads her out towards the ship. Pink follows and without turning, shouts over her back, "Jackie, we've got a new arrival."

A woman with black hair in a ponytail strides across to the office and spares a quiet, "Got it."

The excuse for a shipyard on this rock is so bare, the _Black Cat_ might as well have landed anywhere. If Pink is surprised by the state of the corvette laying half destroyed, she doesn't show it. She's all professional stoicism, though her eyebrows rise an inch when she walks into the cryosleep room to find Jerry and Eruka standing around Blaise, both yelling and trying to keep him conscious.

They both turn to Blair as she enters and they obey her gesture to give Pink some space. Pink places the case on the ground and opens the clasps to reveal a number of vials, needles, syringes, and small bags of fluid. She pulls an electronic tablet out of the pocket of her jacket and moves her fingers over it quickly as she positions herself directly in front of Blaise. She's wearing nothing to indicate that she works in the medical field, but over her shoulder Blair is surprised to see the tablet light up with a host of numbers and fluctuating lines, as well as a holographic image of Blaise's body.

Pink grunts in displeasure and swiftly goes to work preparing a needle and a bag. She pulls apart a pair of attached metal rods and separates them roughly the length of Blaise's body. A beam of- _light?_\- connects to form a stretcher. She drops it with the stretcher parallel to the ground and they all still have the presence of mind to be impressed that it hovers at waist level. Pink pulls a long folding rod out of the corner of the stretcher and hangs the bag.

"Help me move him."

They all exchange a glance, and Jerry hesitates. "Aren't you not supposed to-"

"There's no spinal damage. He can't stay here. _Help_ me or your friend will die."

Peeling his semi conscious form off the back of the cryo-pod reveals his wound once more. It's a testament to the superb structural safety of UNSC vessels that he had managed to survive both the pelican and the _Black Cat_. It's also a miracle that the enormous scraps of metal from the pelican that had punctured his back and thigh hadn't broken any bones. Though the cold of deep sleep had rapidly sealed his wounds and halted his bleeding, it was before that that the most serious blood loss had taken place.

With his body rapidly warming back up to normal temperature, his clock is ticking, and once they take him into the clinic, they're powerless to help. Jackie returns and chatters a hundred miles an hour with Pink- _Kim_, she calls her- as she tends to Blaise. Kim practically drags Stein out of his office- _yes, it's important, I don't care what the reapers are doing, he's dying you prick-_ and upon seeing Blaise, Stein gets a calculating look in his eyes like a machine and shuts a curtain around the bed space.

Blair pulls it back open again and cuts off Stein before he can speak, only for him to try to speak over her. It's a mess of frantic yelling and neither can understand what's being said until Stein shouts, "Where are the Barretts?"

Blair roars her response and Stein motions to Jackie to follow her back to the ship with more emergency supplies. After a scan with her tablet, Jackie doesn't bother to bring them inside, though she's kind enough to at least offer a word of condolence and assure them that they will take care of them once Blaise is stable.

Hunched over in a small, rickety chair with her head leaning on her hands, Blair drifts in and out of consciousness. She thinks of home, and dreams of Sid and Nygus in a ship now crushed and broken, wandering in the stars.

* * *

The first time Blair wakes, Kim is standing at the foot of Blaise's bed, the curtain now rolled back. Eruka is grumbling in her sleep in the chair beside her, and Jerry paces the floor nervously. There's a faint beeping coming from the bedside, and it lulls Blair back to sleep.

* * *

The second time Blair wakes, the curtain is back up and Stein's voice is a steady stream of words just muted enough to be indecipherable. The beeping is twice as fast now as it was before. In the seat Eruka had occupied earlier, Jerry taps his foot at twice the speed of the beeping. His eyes are puffy and bloodshot, and she has to say his name three times before he responds to it. He stops tapping his foot and tries to give a reassuring grin, but it's closer to a grimace. Moments later, he's tapping his foot again. His eyes are fixed on the white curtain.

* * *

The third time she wakes, the windows show that it's night. It had to have been morning when they first arrived, and she tries to pin down how long she's gone without real sleep- excluding her nodding off in her seat here or her involuntary unconsciousness before their escape through slipspace. This time, there's shouting. The curtain is shoved aside, forgotten, and Blair registers Eruka perking up next to her. She squints at Blair and rubs her sleepy, half-lidded eyes. They both look to the bed and see all three of the clinic's current staff hunched over Blaise's body. Jerry holds his hands on his head as Kim yells, "Clear," and they hear a low hum of energy as a button is pushed. Stein commands that Jackie inject something with a name Blair doesn't recognize, and a moment later, Kim yells again, and another thrum is heard.

As she peers at the monitor on the far wall, Blair realizes that what used to be a jagged, moving line has become flat. The beeping is gone, replaced by a constant high tone. Stein moves to push another button on a panel and Jackie injects another syringe. Stein curses again, Kim growls, and Jackie glares at the monitor.

They wait and listen, seconds into minutes, as the staff move hastily through practiced motions. They all stare up at the monitor, and it seems to stare back, ignoring their silent pleas.

* * *

She's never heard Stein _really_ yell before, she realizes as she hears him from down the hall. She doesn't know who he's speaking to, but it's clear that he's absolutely livid, and even the seemingly unshakable Kim wears a shell-shocked expression in the doorway to his office. The phone bangs down onto his desk as Blair steps into the room, Kim and Jackie not bothering to stop her, and Stein hangs his head in his hands. It's also the first time she's seen him without a cigarette. He mumbles, and she makes out, "Not supposed to happen."On the screen of the tablet in front of him, she spots a circle with a triangle and an eye in the middle. Underneath it reads: Office of Naval Intelligence.

* * *

There are no ceremonies, just three small plaques sticking up through the dirt. Jerry looks down at the ground, hot tears on his cheeks. Eruka gazes up, her expression unreadable. Blair faces straight ahead and her hands tremble.

Questions pop into her head, one after the other without stop.

_Blaise was from Reach. He had left his family behind. When he had found out that the planet had been glassed, did he regret leaving?_

_And what about Sid and Nygus? How come they never went back home after they went MIA? They never spoke when the others talked about family. They knew how she looked up to them, didn't they? She never said it in as many words. _

She could fill a book with all the things she wishes she'd said.


End file.
